> I wouldn't called it "worse is better". Why not "less is better" or "simpler is better"?
The original article called 'worse is better' was pretty successful and widely read, and part of it was the title grabbed people's attention. You could argue it's a rephrasing of "less is more" or "do one thing well" concepts for the click bait zeitgeist. That's not a bad thing - an old concept wrapped up in a new way of expressing can keep the idea alive - anyway it's funny and a little confusing, which might trigger someone to engage with it differently. There's many concepts that I've heard n times expressed in different ways only to have it click on the n + 1 way of phrasing it.
Also, the "PC-losering problem" presented as one of the central examples in the original 'Worse is Better' really is an example of 'worse' -- the unix approach gives a modest reduction in kernel implementation complexity at the cost of every single userspace program either taking a complexity hit (retrying on EINTR) or being buggy in corner cases. This isn't just "less" or "simpler" -- it's actively accepting "worse" in order to get a basically functioning thing out the door sooner and maybe fix the most-annoying warts later. (Minimum Viable Product, anybody?)
The original article called 'worse is better' was pretty successful and widely read, and part of it was the title grabbed people's attention. You could argue it's a rephrasing of "less is more" or "do one thing well" concepts for the click bait zeitgeist. That's not a bad thing - an old concept wrapped up in a new way of expressing can keep the idea alive - anyway it's funny and a little confusing, which might trigger someone to engage with it differently. There's many concepts that I've heard n times expressed in different ways only to have it click on the n + 1 way of phrasing it.