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He argues that early Unix and C are examples of this design approach.
Gabriel contrasts this philosophy to the so-called "MIT approach" (also known as "the Right Thing"), which he describes as follows:
I can't find any reference to any paper by rob pike by the title of "More is Less", any references? Maybe you meant "Program Design in the UNIX Environment" AKA "cat -v considered harmful". Lost Goblin 14:17, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
There's a lot going on here historically (I was at Bell Labs while these flame wars were going on, mostly over "netnews" groups). This is just one of many flames that somehow became famous.
At MIT and Stanford AI labs, there was frustration about the popularity of C and UNIX, and the decline of interest in LISP. At Bell Labs, there was a strong distrust of AI, which they considered a source of fraud in the computer-science community. Also a distrust of "hacker" programming, which the Bell Labs UNIX authors thought was sloppy and verbose.
It's an important period because this contention is also part of the context for the creation of the GNU project, which originally had a strong anti-UNIX motivation (even though for a long time, it was largely a rewrite of /usr/bin commands from UNIX). —Preceding unsigned comment added by DonPMitchell ( talk • contribs)
The following paragraph from the article, although it may describe what Gabriel wrote, does not fit the facts:
"Gabriel argues that "Worse is better" produces more successful software than the "MIT approach". As long as the initial program is basically good, it is easier to port to new machines and situations, and will take much less time and effort to implement initially. Thus its use will spread rapidly, long before a program developed using the "MIT approach" has a chance to be developed and deployed."
According to wikipedia, Lisp appeared in 1958 while C appeared fourteen years later in 1972. The paragraph appears to allude to the phenomenon of path dependence in programming languages; whether or not such path dependence exists, the phenomenon would favor Lisp, not C. Is there some other interpretation of this paragraph that jives with the facts? I think the facts should be clarified. Mistercupcake 02:16, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Getting back to the original statement quoted at the top, I find the abstract notion of "new situations" more relevant and conceptually important that "porting to new machines," which is a more concrete example of the previous abstraction. I've changed the order in the phrasing of that sentence, although I'd prefer to totally rewrite it. After all, such a problem is specifically addressed by efforts like JAVA, bypassing (however unsuccessfully) the principle. Easier to port or even the tendency to be easierto port should be subsumed in "more adaptive." Cuvtixo 19:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Only simplicity, correctness, consistency, completeness matters finally, the rest is wordplay. V4vijayakumar 05:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I find some of the ideas better expressed in the anniversary edition of The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks- Basically, the idea of Simplicity trumping all seems to be far the most valuable insight from Gabriel. Interface vs impementation makes some sense, but everything else is jumbled.
Cuvtixo 16:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I can't be the first person to notice this, but...come on, hasn't this guy ever heard of Kurt Gödel? :P -- Shay Guy ( talk) 06:33, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
To me first indicates that guys at MIT do it this way. The second is it's called that way for some reason. Shouldn't it be changed to "MIT approach" ?? 84.16.123.194 ( talk) 00:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Why is "worse is better" called New Jersey style? What has New Jersey to do with it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.191.28.30 ( talk) 19:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
It's called the New Jersey style because Bell Labs is in NJ. Bell Labs is where the C language came from. In his original essay, C was the "worse." Jthemphill ( talk) 09:10, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
"In concrete terms, even though Lisp compilers in 1987 were about as good as C compilers, there are many more compiler experts who want to make C compilers better than want to make Lisp compilers better." I'm not a native English speaker but the last part of that sentence strikes me as grammatically incorrect. I also could not find a source for that quotation.
I'd change it to: "In concrete terms, even though Lisp compilers in 1987 were about as good as C compilers, there are many more compiler experts who want to make C compilers better than there are those who want to make Lisp compilers better." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Niels.bom ( talk • contribs) 22:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
This is just a symptom of a larger problem with this article, it really needs some tidying up and context, particularly as time passes and memories of what was fresh in 1990 become less so. Alternatively, this could be merged into one of several other articles, as other comments on this talk page suggested. Eventually, something should be done, as it is a shame to lose it, but it is difficult to understand as is.
Without reading the talk page, I would have lacked the necessary context and background to comprehend the article. --
FeralOink (
talk) 13:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
one of the most successful software products of all time... was originally called 'quick and dirty os' (QDOS) and was a mishmash of other ideas.
and while we are at it? what about x86 vs the various dead RISC machines?
While this may be notable, the article at present does not provide the reliable secondary sourcing which would make it so. Further, it is lacking both in historical content as well as reception, the latter of which would not necessarily proof its notability, but which would go a long way toward doing so. -- Izno ( talk) 20:31, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
This article is essentially RPG's essay...apparently a fan decided that it would make a good page, and a Wikipedia editor allowed it in a moment of weakness? Keeping it as a single article isn't very helpful for an outsider trying to understand why this essay was written and how it fits into its context. It should be merged / expanded into an article covering the history of software development philosophy. I'm fairly skeptical that Worse is Better deserves any more than a section or subsection in such an article. 98.210.157.185 ( talk) 06:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
The original Multics project history and Bell Labs dropping out, then creating Unix story should be presented here - it's another example of "functionally complete" vs. "ship it and fix issues with after you have a working code base" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.248.107.194 ( talk) 12:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
This is something of a ridiculous criticism because the SUBJECT IS IT'S OWN SOURCE. You can't really expect an article about an essay to have much source other than itself and related articles by the author, which indeed are cited. The other alternative is to include the entire article here. It's as short as many Wikipedia articles, and why should we dredge up citations when the essay in it's entirety be presented? No citations: the source article itself. Cuvtixo ( talk) 23:52, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
I contest this by providing different secondary sources that I believe are unrelated to the author, such as a mention on Gangarz, Mike (2003-08-05), Linux and the Unix philosophy, pp. 122–125, ISBN 9781555582739, Graham, Paul (2004-05-18), Hackers and Painters, p. 220, ISBN 9780596803100, or Mayer, Christian (2022-08-02), The Art of Clean Code, pp. 117–118, ISBN 9781718502192 Santhy ( talk) 10:55, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||
|
He argues that early Unix and C are examples of this design approach.
Gabriel contrasts this philosophy to the so-called "MIT approach" (also known as "the Right Thing"), which he describes as follows:
I can't find any reference to any paper by rob pike by the title of "More is Less", any references? Maybe you meant "Program Design in the UNIX Environment" AKA "cat -v considered harmful". Lost Goblin 14:17, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
There's a lot going on here historically (I was at Bell Labs while these flame wars were going on, mostly over "netnews" groups). This is just one of many flames that somehow became famous.
At MIT and Stanford AI labs, there was frustration about the popularity of C and UNIX, and the decline of interest in LISP. At Bell Labs, there was a strong distrust of AI, which they considered a source of fraud in the computer-science community. Also a distrust of "hacker" programming, which the Bell Labs UNIX authors thought was sloppy and verbose.
It's an important period because this contention is also part of the context for the creation of the GNU project, which originally had a strong anti-UNIX motivation (even though for a long time, it was largely a rewrite of /usr/bin commands from UNIX). —Preceding unsigned comment added by DonPMitchell ( talk • contribs)
The following paragraph from the article, although it may describe what Gabriel wrote, does not fit the facts:
"Gabriel argues that "Worse is better" produces more successful software than the "MIT approach". As long as the initial program is basically good, it is easier to port to new machines and situations, and will take much less time and effort to implement initially. Thus its use will spread rapidly, long before a program developed using the "MIT approach" has a chance to be developed and deployed."
According to wikipedia, Lisp appeared in 1958 while C appeared fourteen years later in 1972. The paragraph appears to allude to the phenomenon of path dependence in programming languages; whether or not such path dependence exists, the phenomenon would favor Lisp, not C. Is there some other interpretation of this paragraph that jives with the facts? I think the facts should be clarified. Mistercupcake 02:16, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Getting back to the original statement quoted at the top, I find the abstract notion of "new situations" more relevant and conceptually important that "porting to new machines," which is a more concrete example of the previous abstraction. I've changed the order in the phrasing of that sentence, although I'd prefer to totally rewrite it. After all, such a problem is specifically addressed by efforts like JAVA, bypassing (however unsuccessfully) the principle. Easier to port or even the tendency to be easierto port should be subsumed in "more adaptive." Cuvtixo 19:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Only simplicity, correctness, consistency, completeness matters finally, the rest is wordplay. V4vijayakumar 05:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I find some of the ideas better expressed in the anniversary edition of The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks- Basically, the idea of Simplicity trumping all seems to be far the most valuable insight from Gabriel. Interface vs impementation makes some sense, but everything else is jumbled.
Cuvtixo 16:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I can't be the first person to notice this, but...come on, hasn't this guy ever heard of Kurt Gödel? :P -- Shay Guy ( talk) 06:33, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
To me first indicates that guys at MIT do it this way. The second is it's called that way for some reason. Shouldn't it be changed to "MIT approach" ?? 84.16.123.194 ( talk) 00:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Why is "worse is better" called New Jersey style? What has New Jersey to do with it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.191.28.30 ( talk) 19:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
It's called the New Jersey style because Bell Labs is in NJ. Bell Labs is where the C language came from. In his original essay, C was the "worse." Jthemphill ( talk) 09:10, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
"In concrete terms, even though Lisp compilers in 1987 were about as good as C compilers, there are many more compiler experts who want to make C compilers better than want to make Lisp compilers better." I'm not a native English speaker but the last part of that sentence strikes me as grammatically incorrect. I also could not find a source for that quotation.
I'd change it to: "In concrete terms, even though Lisp compilers in 1987 were about as good as C compilers, there are many more compiler experts who want to make C compilers better than there are those who want to make Lisp compilers better." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Niels.bom ( talk • contribs) 22:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
This is just a symptom of a larger problem with this article, it really needs some tidying up and context, particularly as time passes and memories of what was fresh in 1990 become less so. Alternatively, this could be merged into one of several other articles, as other comments on this talk page suggested. Eventually, something should be done, as it is a shame to lose it, but it is difficult to understand as is.
Without reading the talk page, I would have lacked the necessary context and background to comprehend the article. --
FeralOink (
talk) 13:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
one of the most successful software products of all time... was originally called 'quick and dirty os' (QDOS) and was a mishmash of other ideas.
and while we are at it? what about x86 vs the various dead RISC machines?
While this may be notable, the article at present does not provide the reliable secondary sourcing which would make it so. Further, it is lacking both in historical content as well as reception, the latter of which would not necessarily proof its notability, but which would go a long way toward doing so. -- Izno ( talk) 20:31, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
This article is essentially RPG's essay...apparently a fan decided that it would make a good page, and a Wikipedia editor allowed it in a moment of weakness? Keeping it as a single article isn't very helpful for an outsider trying to understand why this essay was written and how it fits into its context. It should be merged / expanded into an article covering the history of software development philosophy. I'm fairly skeptical that Worse is Better deserves any more than a section or subsection in such an article. 98.210.157.185 ( talk) 06:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
The original Multics project history and Bell Labs dropping out, then creating Unix story should be presented here - it's another example of "functionally complete" vs. "ship it and fix issues with after you have a working code base" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.248.107.194 ( talk) 12:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
This is something of a ridiculous criticism because the SUBJECT IS IT'S OWN SOURCE. You can't really expect an article about an essay to have much source other than itself and related articles by the author, which indeed are cited. The other alternative is to include the entire article here. It's as short as many Wikipedia articles, and why should we dredge up citations when the essay in it's entirety be presented? No citations: the source article itself. Cuvtixo ( talk) 23:52, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
I contest this by providing different secondary sources that I believe are unrelated to the author, such as a mention on Gangarz, Mike (2003-08-05), Linux and the Unix philosophy, pp. 122–125, ISBN 9781555582739, Graham, Paul (2004-05-18), Hackers and Painters, p. 220, ISBN 9780596803100, or Mayer, Christian (2022-08-02), The Art of Clean Code, pp. 117–118, ISBN 9781718502192 Santhy ( talk) 10:55, 18 April 2024 (UTC)