Worse Is Better

A maxim used to explain such things as

• the success of UNIX and C
• the failure of Lisp.
• the success of the World Wide Web vs Xanadu and other pre-web HyperText systems.

(Here failure and success mean market penetration (Adoption Life Cycle) or mindshare.)

Some varying key points

• people will sacrifice "quality" (as previously defined by the status quo) for new features/benefits (lower-resolution digitized music in exchange for easier sharing/carrying, lower cost): Disruptive Innovation
• the simpler the thing, the more people will do/use it
• things designed for simple interaction lead to Generative Network Effects

Most often associated with Jamie Zawinski, but he got it from Richard P Gabriel.

• The worse-is-better philosophy is only slightly different:
  • Simplicity -- the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the implementation to be simple than the interface. Simplicity is the most important consideration in a design.
  • Correctness -- the design must be correct in all observable aspects. It is slightly better to be simple than correct.
  • Consistency -- the design must not be overly inconsistent. Consistency can be sacrificed for simplicity in some cases, but it is better to drop those parts of the design that deal with less common circumstances than to introduce either implementational complexity or inconsistency.
  • Completeness -- the design must cover as many important situations as is practical. All reasonably expected cases should be covered. Completeness can be sacrificed in favor of any other quality. In fact, completeness must be sacrificed whenever implementation simplicity is jeopardized. Consistency can be sacrificed to achieve completeness if simplicity is retained; especially worthless is consistency of interface.

Victor Lombardi points to Clay Shirky piece in praise of evolvable systems - Iterative is good. Evolvable systems -- those that proceed not under the sole direction of one centralized design authority but by being adapted and extended in a thousand small ways in a thousand places at once -- have three main characteristics that are germane to their eventual victories over strong, centrally designed protocols... Centrally designed protocols start out strong and improve logarithmically. Evolvable protocols start out weak and improve exponentially. It's dinosaurs vs. mammals, and the mammals win every time.

Tim Bray wrote a good series on predicting Which new tech­nolo­gies will make it, and which will fail?

one approach toward Disruptive Innovation?

This doesn't mean that everything that seems worse is actually better, of course! PerlSucks, and so does Yo Mama.