We contend that the worse is better design philosophy, while highly successful, is inherently misguided. In particular, we argue that worse is better succeeds by imposing a disproportionate cost on users. Since the first design which solves a useful subset of a problem tends to win even in the face of better, but later, competition (the so-called first-mover advantage), successful but suboptimal designs often become entrenched. To avoid this problem and encourage the most useful designs, we propose a more nuanced development philosophy, growable-is-better, which offers many of the benefits of worse-is-better but helps contain the cost to the community.
We contend that the worse is better design philosophy, while highly successful, is inherently misguided. In particular, we argue that worse is better succeeds by imposing a disproportionate cost on users. Since the first design which solves a useful subset of a problem tends to win even in the face of better, but later, competition (the so-called first-mover advantage), successful but suboptimal designs often become entrenched. To avoid this problem and encourage the most useful designs, we propose a more nuanced development philosophy, growable-is-better, which offers many of the benefits of worse-is-better but helps contain the cost to the community.