Richard Gabrielâs essay âWorse is Betterâ is used to excuse a lot of bullshit, in ways that Gabriel would not endorse (and in ways thatâŚ
Richard Gabrielâs essay âWorse is Betterâ is used to excuse a lot of bullshit, in ways that Gabriel would not endorse (and in ways that conflict with the explanations Gabriel himself gives). This is probably because, like other damaging slogans such as âmove fast and break thingsâ and âitâs better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permissionâ, itâs short and catchy enough to spread well beyond the context in which itâs valid advice.
âWorse is Betterâ does not argue that bad things are automatically good, or that poor design has an inherent advantage over good design. Instead, it argues that in particular circumstances, the necessity of nuance hinders or slows widespread adoption. It is relatively rare that widespread adoption is desirable, so this phenomenon is usually irrelevant.
I have recently heard people claim âworse is betterâ is the reason that:
I have heard both things from the same person, even though they use essentially contradictory interpretations of the essay. (Both are based on common, yet anhistorical, myths. In fact, Gopher was doing just fine until an attempt to enforce trademarks, and Xanadu has been plagued by management problems.)
Here are some situations when âworseâ can be âbetterâ:
In all of these situations, âbetterâ belongs in scare-quotes:
The web did not win over gopher because âworse is betterâ: a complete gopher client or server can be written by a beginner programmer in an afternoon, while web servers look like Apache (or, at best, like lighttpd) and web browsers look like Chrome (or, at best, like dillo) â gopher is conceptually simpler, has a shallower initial learning curve, and supports all of the useful features of HTTP. Even if it did, that wouldnât justify the win â it would merely be another tragedy.
When âworse is betterâ actually applies, it highlights the ways in which accidents of history occasionally deprive us of greatness. Rather than using it to justify giving up on quality, we ought to rectify the situations in which it occurs.
By John Ohno on November 16, 2018.
[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/worse-and-when-how-it-can-be- better-930ced76acea)
Exported from Medium on September 18, 2020.
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