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The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

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Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#241

Post by hayley-patton »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #204
ezekiel68 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. And nary a tear is shed these days over the death of the so-called superior Lisp machines.

Meh. Lisp machines still exist. They're just simulated in various Lisp's runtime environments. It turns out that a RISC machine running a Lisp interpreter or an executable compiled from Lisp source tends to perform better than a tagged/cdr Lisp Machine w/ hardware GC. That being said... I've wanted to implement an old Explorer using an FPGA for a while. Maybe if I just mention it here, someone will get inspired and d…

Lisp machines didn't have hardware GC, though they had hardware support for read/write barriers.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#243

Post by OhMeadhbh »

kragen wrote: post #225
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem like a "take down" as much as a re-iteration of all the things IBM, DEC, GE and various Telcos did wrong when implementing OSI. I could reduce it to one sentence: "Everyone was so intent on monetizing their own networking implementation they never thought enough about interoperability."

Not only isn't that an accurate summary of Graham's book, it isn't even a topic discussed in the first half of the book, which is all I've read so far. I suspect it isn't a topic discussed in the book at all; can you back up your assertion with some quotes?

Yes, but the book also has enough inaccuracies as to make it... I don't know what. For example, in the first chapter the author says "no one knows what a session is," which is patently false. I myself implemented control logic in telco equipment to respond to X.225 compliant messages to change the state of an abstract state machine used on either side of the connection. And while I'm sure it's possible to use CONS or CLNP to communicate with a CEEFAX terminal, that is far from the only use to which the various OSI compliant protocols were put.

Just because you don't understand something, that doesn't mean it's bad.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#244

Post by auggierose »

GiorgioG wrote: post #30
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript really illustrates the ultimate path-dependence of evolution. It got widely deployed during a boom time and therefore we are stuck with it forever.

We don’t have to be stuck with it forever. Start pushing WASM instead of React, etc. We can get there, but as technologists we have to make a concerted effort to do so.

WASM instead of React? That does not even make sense.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#245

Post by avidiax »

aulin wrote: post #234
hammock wrote: post #43

There was an article posted on here[1] a while back that I only just found again, introducing the term "expedience." The idea was that we think we live in a world where people have to have "the best" sweater, be on "the best" social network, drive "the best" car, etc. But when you look at what really WINS, it's not the best, it's the most "expedient" - i.e. sufficiently good, with built-in social proof, inoculated of…

> inoculated of buyer's remorse Non native here. What's the meaning of inoculated here? It's not the first time that I struggle to parse this word. In italian it keeps the original latin meaning and can be translated with "injected with". You could inoculate a vaccine but you could also inoculate a poison, so it does not carry the immunity meaning by default. English (US?) as far as I can tell use it as a synonym of…

I think the author means "vaccinated". They mean that they've been made resistant to buyer's remorse.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#246

Post by pmg101 »

aulin wrote: post #234
hammock wrote: post #43

There was an article posted on here[1] a while back that I only just found again, introducing the term "expedience." The idea was that we think we live in a world where people have to have "the best" sweater, be on "the best" social network, drive "the best" car, etc. But when you look at what really WINS, it's not the best, it's the most "expedient" - i.e. sufficiently good, with built-in social proof, inoculated of…

> inoculated of buyer's remorse Non native here. What's the meaning of inoculated here? It's not the first time that I struggle to parse this word. In italian it keeps the original latin meaning and can be translated with "injected with". You could inoculate a vaccine but you could also inoculate a poison, so it does not carry the immunity meaning by default. English (US?) as far as I can tell use it as a synonym of…

It should be "inoculated against" but the meaning is clear.

A vaccine inoculates you against a disease by a physical mechanism: that is, it prevents you from getting that disease (to a greater or lesser degree).

Metaphorically being inoculated against something means it can no longer hurt you. For instance, maybe by not owning a car you're inoculated against vehicle depreciation. Or by wearing the same simple but quality outfit every day you're inoculated against the vagaries of fashion.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#247

Post by pjmlp »

kragen wrote: post #155
pjmlp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one really uses standard C for systems programming, yet that always applies to other languages. There is always Assembly, compiler extensions, or OS specific APIs, as part of the deliverable. Funny how UNIX folks always have these two weights approach. I beg to differ in wax quality for candles, but if we get to do juice with bitter lemons, so be it. At least is refreshing during Summer.

Do you know if VAX BASIC fixed the problems I mentioned in BASIC? Was it interpreted? K&R C has separate compilation, pointer casting, a usable but janky and bug-prone variable-length string type, variadic functions, static variables, literal data of array and record types, bitwise operations, a filesystem access API, and an array iterator type. None of those require "assembly, compiler extensions, or OS specific API…

VAX BASIC was always compiled, it was its predecessors that were not, bitsavers or wikipedia have the background info.

Take all the Assembly routines from libc, and K&R C turns into a macro assembler with nicer syntax. And not a good one, given that real macro assemblers actually have better macro capabilities, alongside their high level constructs.

Quite visible in the C dialects that were actually available outside UNIX, on computers people could afford, like the RatC (Made availalbe via A book on C) and Small-C (DDJ article series).

Well even dumbest standard pascal compilers like GPC do allow calling into Assembly. So it should count for Pascal as well, if that is the measure.

Then we have this thing sticking with ISO Pascal from and its dialects, always ignoring that this was seen as an issue, that that is why Modula-2 exists since 1978, and Extended Pascal since 1991, one year later after ANSI C (C89 got a short C90 revision fix).

Also following the K&R C alongside Assembly line, several companies were quite successful with Pascal dialect alongside Assembly, including a famous fruit company.

Back in 2024, C extensions keep being celebrated to the point the most famous UNIX clone can only be compiled with a specific compiler, and the second alternative is only possible after a search company has burned lots of money making it possible.

But hey, lets stick to Pascal and its dialects.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#248

Post by [deleted] »

adastra22 wrote: post #200
foobazgt wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#249

Post by MikeTheGreat »

circlefavshape wrote: post #102
dkarl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expedient" is a common (or at least not rare) English word that means something like "practical and effective even if not directly attending to higher or deeper considerations." For example, if two students in a class are having frequent confrontations that bring learning in the class to a halt, and attempts by teachers and counselors to address their conflict directly haven't been effective, the expedient solution…

> For example, if we solve climate change with geoengineering instead of by addressing thoughtless consumerism, corporate impunity, and lack of international accountability, many people would feel frustrated or let down by the solution because it would solve the problem without addressing the moral shortcomings that led to the problem. Oof. Now I understand something I didn't before

Are you sure? No offence, but I don't think there's anything to understand here.

If we could solve climate change without "addressing thoughtless consumerism, corporate impunity, and lack of international accountability" we would all be f'ing _thrilled_.

As I type this Hurricane Helene just destroyed a good chunk of inland North Carolina (!!!) and Hurricane Wilton was just upgraded to a "category 5" storm.

If we could solve climate change the easy way we'd all be _thrilled_, because then we'd actually solve climate change.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#250

Post by actionfromafar »

api wrote: post #110
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.

There was something long ago called GWT -- Google Web Toolkit -- that tried to make Java into that language by having it compile to JavaScript. It actually worked decently well, but was due to Java needlessly verbose. WASM lets us run other languages efficiently in the browser but that just opens the field to a lot of languages, not one language to rule them all.

Also GWT apps were pretty slow to load and start, and were very "app"-like as opposed to web-page like at a time when that was not as familiar as it is today. That's how I remember it anyway. And pretty heavy, developer wise, at a time when "update a file on the FTP" was still normal.
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