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The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

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Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#291

Post by tightbookkeeper »

Arch-TK wrote: post #272

I have a theory that the worse is better approach begets an environment where the worse is better approach is better. At least hypothetically, I think there's an approach which is not "the right thing" or "worse is better" but rather more like "the right foundations". Most interface complexity in my experience seems to be inherited from underlying interface complexity, and it takes a lot of work to fix that underlyin…

good comment. But I question how much you can package up inherent complexity in a simple interface, due to leaky abstraction.

The biggest benefit of simplicity in design is when the whole system is simple, so it’s easy to hack on and reason about.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#292

Post by dkarl »

hnben wrote: post #276
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…

non-native speaker here > "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." I was not aware of the word "Expedient" before. From your example I conclude, that it has the same meaning as "pragmatic", i.e. if I sed i/expedient/pragmatic/g then your comment still makes perfect sense to me. A q…

There's a lot of overlap, and you could certainly use "pragmatic" in the two example contexts I gave. The differences as best as I can sum them up are:

- "Pragmatic" can also be used to describe a person (a pragmatic person) or a mindset (a pragmatic approach to a problem.) "Expedient" isn't used to describe people.

- "Expedient" usually acknowledges the existence of a higher or more demanding standard that the solution does not meet, admitting that the solution is not perfect. You might choose a word like "pragmatic" to praise a solution with known shortcomings, but it doesn't imply known shortcomings as strongly as "expedient" does.

- "Expedient" can be used euphemistically. ("Pragmatic" can, too, but not nearly as often, and not as harshly.) "They took the expedient route" might, depending on the context, mean that they did something lazy or unethical because it was easier. The euphemistic usage is common enough that for some people it has an overall unsavory flavor, but I don't think it's tipped over into the euphemistic usage being the assumed one.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#293

Post by foldr »

inglor_cz wrote: post #286
foldr wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If innocent people being murdered or the threat of an imminent environmental catastrophe don't meet your 'high barriers', then nothing will. So though you claim in principle to approve of some protests, what you're saying in practice is that no-one should protest against anything because they'll probably just make things worse – because people in general are fairly awful and people who take charge of things are even…

War is often more complicated than "innocent people being murdered" and we both know it. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't morally black and white, and the current Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is something else entirely. I think you may be proving my point. Taking one side of a complicated situation because of a black-and-white moralistic thinking is potentially destructive, and organizations like Hamas benefit fr…

Protestors are protesting against things that they think are seriously wrong. What you think about the Israel-Palestine conflict or the history of the abolition of slavery is completely irrelevant to their decision whether or not to protest about something. (But err, yes, popular anti-slavery movements played an important role in the abolition of slavery. The Haitian revolution didn't happen because we 'gained a new non-human resource of raw power'.)

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#294

Post by me_again »

jpc0 wrote: post #288
Arch-TK wrote: post #272

I have a theory that the worse is better approach begets an environment where the worse is better approach is better. At least hypothetically, I think there's an approach which is not "the right thing" or "worse is better" but rather more like "the right foundations". Most interface complexity in my experience seems to be inherited from underlying interface complexity, and it takes a lot of work to fix that underlyin…

I have a question for this premise. How would you design a network interface using your right foundations model? I'm not talking about HTML or whatnot. I have some sort of medium, copper, fiber whatever and I would like to send 10 bytes to the other side of it. What is the right foundations that would lead to an implementation which isn't overly complex.

Not a direct answer, but Ethernet is sometimes brought up as a successful example of Worse is Better. At one point Token Ring was a serious competitor - it had careful designs to avoid collisions when the network was busy, prioritize traffic, etc. But it was comparatively slow and expensive. Ethernet just says "eh, retry on collision.". And that simplistic foundation has carried on to where we have a standard for 800 Gigabit Ethernet.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#295

Post by inglor_cz »

foldr wrote: post #293
inglor_cz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is often more complicated than "innocent people being murdered" and we both know it. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't morally black and white, and the current Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is something else entirely. I think you may be proving my point. Taking one side of a complicated situation because of a black-and-white moralistic thinking is potentially destructive, and organizations like Hamas benefit fr…

Protestors are protesting against things that they think are seriously wrong. What you think about the Israel-Palestine conflict or the history of the abolition of slavery is completely irrelevant to their decision whether or not to protest about something. (But err, yes, popular anti-slavery movements played an important role in the abolition of slavery. The Haitian revolution didn't happen because we 'gained a new…

"Protestors are protesting against things that they think are seriously wrong."

OK, but that was sort-of my point. The more outrage, the less you need to really think about things.

"err, yes, popular anti-slavery movements played an important role in the abolition of slavery"

That is a chicken-and-egg question. Why did those mass movements only emerge at the time of the Industrial Revolution, and why did they emerge first in places that were influenced by the Industrial Revolution the earliest, while other places (Russia, the Ottoman Empire, the Qing Empire) only followed suit after their own industrialization began?

I don't think the arrow of causality is so simple here. A hypothetical society that abolished slavery, serfdom etc. in the 15th century could easily prove non-viable against its slavery-powered foes, which had more brute force at their disposal. By 1820, the situation was very much turning around and it was the modern, personally freer societies that were more effective in commerce and at war.

Notably, even though Victorian Britain was very anti-slavery, starting with the monarch herself, it had no moral qualms against subjugating a quarter of humanity in another form of submission. Which tells me that it was less about morality (equality) and more about practicality of the situation.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#296

Post by foldr »

inglor_cz wrote: post #295
foldr wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protestors are protesting against things that they think are seriously wrong. What you think about the Israel-Palestine conflict or the history of the abolition of slavery is completely irrelevant to their decision whether or not to protest about something. (But err, yes, popular anti-slavery movements played an important role in the abolition of slavery. The Haitian revolution didn't happen because we 'gained a new…

"Protestors are protesting against things that they think are seriously wrong." OK, but that was sort-of my point. The more outrage, the less you need to really think about things. "err, yes, popular anti-slavery movements played an important role in the abolition of slavery" That is a chicken-and-egg question. Why did those mass movements only emerge at the time of the Industrial Revolution, and why did they emerge…

Everyone agrees that innocent people are being killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict and that this is an outrage. The disagreement is over exactly which people fall into this category and who is to blame. Acknowledging the horror and being outraged by it does not preclude thought, and it is ungenerous and inaccurate (and, indeed, cynical!) to characterize all protests about the conflict as thoughtless.

Your take on slavery is pretty wild. The Industrial Revolution did not replace Haitian slaves with machines for harvesting sugar cane. Nor did Spartacus invent the steam engine.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#297

Post by adamc »

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.

But the essay lays out the reality: For WASM to replace JavaScript, it needs to be better (in the sense of easy to adopt, solves a problem right now) every step of the way. That is not, as yet, true.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#298

Post by germandiago »

For me this is just utopia vs real world.

What is better, a perfect design or one that exists?

Our mind tries to trick us into thinking that the choice is between perfect and not so perfect.

No, in real-life it is common that aiming for the perfect ruins everything else, even the existence of that idea in real form due to other constraints.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#299

Post by gpderetta »

Arch-TK wrote: post #272

I have a theory that the worse is better approach begets an environment where the worse is better approach is better. At least hypothetically, I think there's an approach which is not "the right thing" or "worse is better" but rather more like "the right foundations". Most interface complexity in my experience seems to be inherited from underlying interface complexity, and it takes a lot of work to fix that underlyin…

> But the difficulty of "the right foundations" is that nobody knows what the right foundations are the first 10 times they implement them

Yes and it worse than that. The right foundations might change with time and changing requirements.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#300

Post by Arch-TK »

tightbookkeeper wrote: post #291
Arch-TK wrote: post #272

I have a theory that the worse is better approach begets an environment where the worse is better approach is better. At least hypothetically, I think there's an approach which is not "the right thing" or "worse is better" but rather more like "the right foundations". Most interface complexity in my experience seems to be inherited from underlying interface complexity, and it takes a lot of work to fix that underlyin…

good comment. But I question how much you can package up inherent complexity in a simple interface, due to leaky abstraction. The biggest benefit of simplicity in design is when the whole system is simple, so it’s easy to hack on and reason about.

Abstraction leaks are usually a result of a worse is better approach. But yes, as I think I said in my original comment, its very difficult to successfully completely pave over a poor base.

And yes, I agree that simplicity needs to start quite low down the stack (ideally at the hardware, or the firmware, or the drivers, or the kernel as a last resort) for the complexity not to explode as you keep adding layers.

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