Worse is better?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 10/8/2014 12:44 PM, Joakim wrote:
> This is a somewhat famous phrase from a late '80s essay that's mentioned
> sometimes, but I hadn't read it till this week.  It's a fascinating one-page
> read, he predicted that lisp would lose out to C++ when he delivered this speech
> in 1990, well worth reading:
>
> https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html
>
> Since "worse" and "better" are subjective terms, I interpret it as "simpler
> spreads faster and wider than complex."  He thinks simpler is worse and complex
> is often better, hence the title. Perhaps it's not as true anymore because that
> was the wild west of computing back then, whereas billions of people use the
> software built using these languages these days, so maybe we cannot afford to be
> so fast and loose.


I can't help but think that this is nothing more than different people have 
different ideas on what "better" is.

It reminds me of the Beta vs VHS debate. Rarely mentioned is a movie could fit 
on one VHS tape, rather than 2 Beta tapes. (VHS was cheaper, too.) That made VHS 
"better" for an awful lot of people.

"What Sony did not take into account was what consumers wanted. While Betamax 
was believed to be the superior format in the minds of the public and press (due 
to excellent marketing by Sony), consumers wanted an affordable VCR (a VHS often 
cost hundreds of dollars less than a Betamax);[9] Sony believed that having 
better quality recordings was the key to success, and that consumers would be 
willing to pay a higher retail price for this, whereas it soon became clear that 
consumer desire was focused more intently on recording time, lower retail price, 
compatibility with other machines for sharing (as VHS was becoming the format in 
the majority of homes), brand loyalty to companies who licensed VHS (RCA, 
Magnavox, Zenith, Quasar, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, even JVC itself, et al.), and 
compatibility for easy transfer of information.[10] In addition, Sony, being the 
first producer to offer their technology, also thought it would establish 
Betamax as the leading format. This kind of lock-in and path dependence failed 
for Sony, but succeeded for JVC. For thirty years JVC dominated the home market 
with their VHS, Super VHS and VHS-Compact formats, and collected billions in 
royalty payments."

  -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war#End_of_Beta

It's a cautionary tale for us.