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Rise of Worse Is Better

dreamsongs.com · 1,672 words · saved by 1 readers

I and just about every designer of Common Lisp and CLOS has had extreme exposure to the MIT/Stanford style of design. The essence of this style can be captured by the phrase the right thing. To such a designer it is important to get all of the following characteristics right: I believe most people would agree that these are good characteristics. I will call the use of this philosophy of design the MIT approach. Common Lisp (with CLOS) and Scheme represent the MIT approach to design and implementation. The worse-is-better philosophy is only slightly different: Early Unix and C are examples of the use of this school of design, and I will call the use of this design strategy the New Jersey approach. I have intentionally caricatured the worse-is-better philosophy to convince you that it is obviously a bad philosophy and that the New Jersey approach is a bad approach. However, I believe that worse-is-better, even in its strawman form, has better survival characteristics than the-right-thing

Rise of Worse Is Better The Rise of Worse is Better Richard P. Gabriel Lucid, Inc {an excerpt from "Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big." [ html ]} 2.1 The Rise of Worse is Better I and just about every designer of Common Lisp and CLOS has had extreme exposure to the MIT/Stanford style of design. The essence of this style can be captured by the phrase the right thing . To such a designer it is important to get all of the following characteristics right: Simplicity -- the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the interface to be simple than

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