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The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

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Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#31

Post by GiorgioG »

karel-3d wrote: post #28
TacticalCoder wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup first thing I thought. That pathetic piece of crap conceived in basically 15 days (not kidding)... BUT it is what we have on the front-end for web apps so there's that. JavaScript is the mediocre turd I love to hate.

And it keeps being polished and improved to the point it's almost not a turd, and now has types sort of, and much better engines, and now there are ARM machines that are literally designed to run it faster, and now most of your actual PC applications are written in it. But honestly it's kind of refreshing to see the original node.js presentation, where using javascript is sort of a side-note. He wanted to use callbac…

It will always be a turd. Typescript is a nice illusion, but underneath is still the same turd.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#32

Post by yoyohello13 »

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.

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 you can just start writing code and eventually get to a solution. You don't need to plan, or think about types, or deal with syntax errors. You just write your code and see it executed right there in the REPL.

For my part, I love LISP when it's just me doing the coding, but once you start adding other peoples custom DSL macros or whatever the heck it becomes unwieldy. Basically, I love my LISP and hate other peoples LISP.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#33

Post by st_goliath »

aredox wrote: post #3

And then we wonder why everything gets worse and worse.

> ... everything gets worse and worse ...

    They're coming to take me a away haha
    they're coming to take me a away hoho hihi haha
    to the funny farm where code is beautiful all the time ...
-- Napoleon XIV, more or less...

Via: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#34

Post by kayo_20211030 »

gpderetta wrote: post #9
orwin wrote: post #6

This... Honestly the first lines seemed I thought this was an arrogant take, but he made _really_ good point and now I tend to agree with him. Still I am a bit bothered, does a counterargument exist?

Empirically, it seems Worse is Better appear to have been correct many many times.

The New Jersey approach has the benefit of dealing with time in a sensible way.

The time to market for the MIT approach is just too long if your revenue relies on actually shipping a product that covers the cost of the next iteration that will move you from 80% to 90%, or even 60% to 70%. It's an old joke, but in the long run we're all dead; and waiting for the production of an ivory tower implementation won't work out well. If it's all academic, and there's no commercial pressure, well, have at it. There's not much at stake except reputations.

Furthermore, in the real world, your users' requirements and your internal goals, theoretically covered by "the" design, will change. Not everything can be reasonably anticipated. The original design is now deficient, and its implementation, which is taking too long anyway, will be a perfect reflection of its deficiency; and, not fit for its new purpose.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#36

Post by actionfromafar »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #18
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.

But I feel like other languages that we were de-facto "stuck with" in certain domains boomed and then busted - i.e. Lua, Pearl, etc

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

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#37

Post by kqr »

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.

> 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 – so much so that the New Jersey people skipped right past most of it.

Today these things are par for the course. At the time, they were the The Right Thing that made the system correct but complex, and had adoption penalties. As time passes, the bar for The Right Thing shifts, and today, it would probably not be embodied by Lisp, but maybe by something like Haskell or Rust?

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#38

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#39

Post by actionfromafar »

GiorgioG wrote: post #31
karel-3d wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it keeps being polished and improved to the point it's almost not a turd, and now has types sort of, and much better engines, and now there are ARM machines that are literally designed to run it faster, and now most of your actual PC applications are written in it. But honestly it's kind of refreshing to see the original node.js presentation, where using javascript is sort of a side-note. He wanted to use callbac…

It will always be a turd. Typescript is a nice illusion, but underneath is still the same turd.

To me WASM is the wildcard. It lets other languages infect the Javascript host organism.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#40

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #16

I know this is an article about Lisp and the specific usage of this term in the context of software acceptance, but when you use a title that provocative I want to speak specifically about the idea of "Worse is Better" with respect to a more literal idea of "sometimes things get worse overtime but you are told they have improved" For example, why is it that central vacuums are more rare in 2024 than they were in the…

Central vacuums are worse in at least one specific way: Cost of fixing or replacing them when they break.
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