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Fighting the Culture of 'Worse Is Better'

Posted by Soulskill on from the fighting-for-reasoned-debate dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Developer Paul Chiusano thinks much of programming culture has been infected by a "worse is better" mindset, where trade-offs to preserve compatibility and interoperability cripple the functionality of vital languages and architectures. He says, "[W]e do not merely calculate in earnest to what extent tradeoffs are necessary or desirable, keeping in mind our goals and values -- there is a culture around making such compromises that actively discourages people from even considering more radical, principled approaches." Chiusano takes C++ as an example, explaining how Stroustrup's insistence that it retain full compatibility with C has led to decades of problems and hacks.

He says this isn't necessarily the wrong approach, but the culture of software development prevents us from having a reasoned discussion about it. "Developing software is a form of investment management. When a company or an individual develops a new feature, inserts a hack, hires too quickly without sufficient onboarding or training, or works on better infrastructure for software development (including new languages, tools, and the like), these are investments or the taking on of debt. ... The outcome of everyone solving their own narrow short-term problems and never really revisiting the solutions is the sea of accidental complexity we now operate in, and which we all recognize is a problem."

3 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Easy to say when not dealing with customers by NotDrWho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's easy for a programmer to say "We should stop worrying so much about compatibility and interoperability" when they don't have to deal with customers, support, or actually selling the end product. When a customer calls up and says, "Hey, how come this new version of Windows doesn't work with any of my old Windows software?" you can't just tell them "Because our programmers thought it was better to get a fresh start."

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  2. Huh by JanneM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So.. preserving backwards compatibility and interoperability across versions is a bad thing? If he's unhappy with the feature set of C++ (and I wouldn't blame him for that), then how about simply picking up a different language instead? That's what a new, non-compatible C++ version would be in any case.

    Look at how great it has worked out for Python. It's been six years since the only mildly incompatible version 3 was released, and it has still not managed to become dominant over the legacy version 2. A more radical break would almost certainly have had an even tougher road ahead.

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  3. I disagree with the premise... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Worse is better" is little more than Chiusano's opinion of what is happening.

    .
    So he thinks that compatibility and interoperability are not features which he likes. OK, I'm OK with that.

    However, that is his opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

    There are reasons why interoperability and compatibility are desired. It is not the easiest path to provide those characteristics, on the contrary, it is easier to just say, ~screw compatibility, screw interoperability~, and you'll probably finish your task more quickly.

    So then the question becomes, why do people invest extra effort in order to assure interoperability and compatibility?

    ...which we all recognize is a problem....

    And now he presumes to speak for everyone....

    Overall it sounds like he just got out of a bad meeting in which someone told him that his opinions are not worth the air used to utter them, and now he's trying to convince the world that he is right and the world is wrong.