
Doing One Thing, Well: The Unix Philosophy - axiomdata316
https://hackaday.com/2018/09/10/doing-one-thing-well-the-unix-philosophy/
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nickelcitymario
This is always hardest in the beginning. At the start of any project, it feels
wasteful to separate every bit of functionality into its own, self-contained
project, including the necessity to implement a standard I/O model for it.

But as the project advances? I'm usually cursing myself for writing code that
does two or three things, because suddenly it needs to be configured to do a
slightly different 2 or 3 things, and before you know it I don't even know why
I wrote the damn thing in the first place.

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numeromancer
> Another interesting idea to come out of the computing world around that time
> was the saying “worse is better“. Although this idea wasn’t a direct
> relative of the Unix philosophy, it’s certainly similar. The idea references
> the fact that additional features or complexity doesn’t necessarily make
> things better, and a “worse” project — one with fewer features and less
> complexity — is actually better because it will tend to be more reliable and
> usable.

I don't think that this is an accurate description of "worse is better". I've
always taken it as being a bit (or more) tongue-in-cheek. Sort of an analogy
to the saying that a lie can travel half-way around the world before the truth
can get its boots on, but going on the say that a lie is therefore better
because its faster.

~~~
jazzyjackson
My understanding of "worse is better" is that it's a terse reading of "perfect
is the enemy of just good enough", or in other words, "just ship it already"
\- pick a stopping point where it's useful, and stop worrying about how it
could be perfect - you'll never ship.

A more verbose breakdown of "worse is better" can be found in Richard
Gabriels: "The Rise of Worse is Better"[1] also linked in the OP, which
includes a really fun breakdown of MIT attitudes vs New Jersey attitudes. (To
wit: AT&T Unix came to us from New Jersey)

[1] [https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-
better.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html)

