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The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

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Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#191

Post by hyggetrold »

bbor wrote: post #152
ezekiel68 wrote: post #125

I'm always happy whenever this old article goes viral. For two reasons: First, learning to accept the fact that the better solutions doesn't always win has helped me keep may sanity over more than two decades in the tech industry. And second, I'm old enough to have a pretty good idea what the guy meant when he replied, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."

I’m glad to know a new article that “everyone knows”! Thanks for pointing out the age. And, at the risk of intentionally missing the metaphor: they do in fact make automated tenderizers, now ;) https://a.co/d/hybzu2U

It's a funny expression and it is rooted in advertising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Perdue

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#192

Post by anthk »

turtleyacht wrote: post #47
yoyohello13 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like LISP, but I wouldn't say I'm an evangelist. Here's my 2 cents for why LISP has such a following. 1. LISP is easy to start with if you're not a programmer. There is very little syntax to get to grips with, and once you understand "everything is a list" it's super easy to expand out from there. 2. LISP really makes it easy to hack your way to a solution. With the REPL and the transparency of "code is data" model…

Once you get far enough to need external dependencies, do you use your work as a library in another language or rewrite it? http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html

QuickLisp solves most of the issues. Quiop and closer-mop if you want a universal CLOS.

Scheme is not Common Lisp, it's kinda the opposite. It comes with batteries included and MCClim is the defacto GUI for it.

>Stuck with Emacs [from the URL]

Well, Lem tries to be Emacs for Common Lisp, but without having to think on two Lisp languages (albeit closely related) at once.

Once you have a REPL, autocomplete and some docstring looking up tool, you are god.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#193

Post by anthk »

Blackthorn wrote: post #23
NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #11

I'll never understand the obsession with LISP. My guess is it just appeals to a certain type of person, sort of academic in my view. I'm not convinced that LISP was ever the-right-thing. The author didn't express anything about LISP vs C except to assert that C was a 50% solution and LISP was better. I agree though that for practical purposes, practical solutions are just going to be more successful.

How do you know someone knows lisp? They'll tell you. And tell you. And tell you... I like lisp for the most part, but holy shit is the enduring dialog surrounding it the absolute worst part of the whole family of languages by far. No, it doesn't have or give you superpowers. Please grow up.

Do either the book on Symbolic Computation + PAIP and/or SICP, and you'll understand.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#194

Post by Jach »

kragen wrote: post #82
kqr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not convinced that LISP was ever the-right-thing. Remember that this has to be read in historical context. At the time C was invented, things like garbage collection, message-passing object-orientation, generics, rich sets of conditionals, first-class functions, etc. were brand spanking new. They were The Right Thing to do (even judged in the harsh light of hindsight), but also quite complicated to implement –…

This paper was written in 01991. Garbage collection is from 01959. Message-passing (aka object-orientation) is from 01972. C is from 01973. If by "generics" you mean parametric polymorphism, those were added to Ada and C++ in the mid-80s, after having been invented in ML in 01973; in a sense they're an attempt to bring the virtues of dynamically-typed languages like Lisp to statically-typed languages. Even today, I d…

What do you think of Coalton?

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#195

Post by [deleted] »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #182
actionfromafar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript is the only language which straddled the Client Server Gap. If it weren't for Node, Javascript would not have been as popular.

It's still absolutely baffling to me that anyone is willing to run JS server side. There are so many options which are much better suited, why are people willing to jam that square peg into the round hole?

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#196

Post by ahoka »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #156
karel-3d wrote: post #29

I remember when I had a lesson about OSI layers, where the teacher has carefully described all the layers in detail and then said something like "most of this is not important, these layers don't really exist, TCP/IP got popular first because it's just much simpler than OSI was"

IMO the OSI layer system (even though using TCP/IP suite) has some merit in education. To most of us, the concept of layering protocols may seem obvious, but I've talked to people who are just learning this stuff, and they have a lot of trouble understanding it. Emphasizing that each layer is (in theory) cleanly separated and doesn't know about layers above and below, is a very useful step towards understanding abstr…

The problem is that this is not true. There are no such clean strictly hierarchical layers in most of the protocols that make up the internet.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#197

Post by api »

dokyun wrote: post #143
api wrote: post #13

I feel like we're seeing a bit of push-back today against worse-is-better in the area of languages. Rust in particular feels more like the MIT approach, albeit with an escape hatch via the explicit keyword "unsafe." Its type system is very thoroughly specified and correct as opposed to C's YOLO typing.

Rust is not the MIT approach, because an important aspect of that approach is that it's conceptually simple. Rust is a leviathan of complexity both in interface and implementation. Common Lisp is an MIT approach language, and approaches the same problems like memory and type safety by doing "the right thing" by default and offering more advanced options like type annotations and optimization levels in a "take it or l…

That's an interesting counter-take and it makes me wonder if Rust isn't a third thing... not the clean sparse MIT approach but also not the wild YOLO slop of C and Unix. Something correct but also complex and pragmatic. Maybe it's an attempt at a synthesis of the two -- Unix's gnarly pragmatism but with correctness.

My heart loves the clean sparse MIT approach, but I'm kinda forced to work in the other world because that approach has so far decisively failed.

I have my own thoughts as to why, and they're different from the typical ones:

(1) Worse is free -- the "worse" stuff tended to be less encumbered by patents and closed source / copyrights. This is particularly true after GNU, BSD, and Linux. Free stuff is viral. It spreads fast and overtakes everything else.

(2) Programmers like to show off, and "worse" provides more opportunities to revel in complexity and cleverness.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#198

Post by worstspotgain »

Jach wrote: post #175
gpderetta wrote: post #7

> The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++. And 30 years later they show few signs of letting go.

At a certain level, sure, but C++ at least has definitely lost out. In the 90s it seemed like it might really take over all sorts of application domains, it was incredibly popular. Now and for probably the last couple decades it and C have only kept around 10% of the global job market.

It's not C++ that has been replaced, it's VB.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#199

Post by NAHWheatCracker »

Jach wrote: post #185
NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #11

I'll never understand the obsession with LISP. My guess is it just appeals to a certain type of person, sort of academic in my view. I'm not convinced that LISP was ever the-right-thing. The author didn't express anything about LISP vs C except to assert that C was a 50% solution and LISP was better. I agree though that for practical purposes, practical solutions are just going to be more successful.

It's not a perfectly reliable tell, but people who write LISP instead of Lisp generally give themselves away as knowing nothing about the language. Why not kick the tires with Common Lisp, or even Clojure, and see if you can then understand for yourself why it sparks joy in people? I'm not saying it'll spark joy in you, just that you might understand. (Do you understand Haskell's draw to certain people? Rust's?) At t…

My only personal experience writing with Lisp was Scheme, which I wrote for two weeks back in college 18 years ago, so I truly know nothing about the language.

In retrospect, saying I don't understand was hyperbolic. Of course I understand that people have their preferred languages. The handful of languages I've used in my career each have their draw.

My comment was meant more to question the assertion that Lisp is the-right-thing, which sounds like asserting the-right-religion.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#200

Post by adastra22 »

foobazgt wrote: post #178
adastra22 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Toyota would have gotten your point across better. Tesla is most certainly not expedient. It is a luxury purchase.

It's definitely in a class above Toyota, but once you account for gas savings, the LR RWD costs about as much as the cheapest Corolla you can buy. People bagged on Tesla being too expensive when their $35K car was only available over the phone. Now, adjusted for inflation, the LR RWD is $28K and comes with 100mi additional range to boot. On top of that, it's $13K below the average car purchase price. IMO, it destroys…

Really depends on where you live and what your electric rates are. These is my breakdown (Corolla comes out ahead as cheaper to operate): https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/14rj3fp/tesla_...
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