# The Rise of Worse is Better * [The Rise of Worse is Better - Richard P. Gabriel](https://web.mit.edu/6.033/www/papers/Worse_is_Better.pdf) ## Notes * MIT/Standford approach vs the New Jersey approach. ### MIT Approach to Software Development Common Lisp and CLOS had influence from MIT approach which put emphasis on following principles, * Simplicity - both interface and implementation must be simple. It is more important that the interface is simple than the implemntation. * Correctness - the design must be correct in all observable aspects. Incorrectness is simply not allowed. * Consistency - the design must not be inconsistent. The design is allowed to be slightly less simple and less complete to avoid inconsistency. Consistency is as important as correctness. * Completeness - the design must cover as many important situations as is practical. All reasonably expected cases must be covered. Simplicity is not allowed to overly reduce completeness. ### New Jersey approach to Software Develpment This is characterised by the *UNIX* and *C* programming innovations. This is called the *worse-is-better* appraoch by the author. * Simplicity - both interface and implementation must be simple. It is more important that the implementation is to be simple than the interface. * 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. Completeness can be sacrificed in favor of any other quality. In fact, completeness must sacrificed whenever implementation simplicity is jeopardized. Consistency can be sacrificed to achieve completeness if simplicity is retained; especially worthless is consistency of interface. UNIX and C are descendents of the *worse-is-better* approach. * They are easy to port because implementation is *simple*. * Since they cater to the common use case, they are optimised to run from smallest computers to the largest ones. * Author compares the spread of UNIX and C programming to a spread of a virus. * Author also compares Common Lisp as an example of a big complex systems scenario with a monolith (static) design and the design of Scheme to a diamond-lie jewel. * Author contends that even though C is *worse-is-better* type of language it is not the right tool for AI software. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://wiki.dewaka.com/papers/cs/rise-of-worse-is-better.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.