Talk:Worse is better

message: Why is "worse is better" called New Jersey style? What has New Jersey to do with it?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.191.28.30 (talk) 19:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Jersey Style? 

message: "In concrete terms, even though Lisp compilers in 1987 were about as good as C compilers, there are many more compiler experts who want to make C compilers better than want to make Lisp compilers better."
I'm not a native English speaker but the last part of that sentence strikes me as grammatically incorrect. I also could not find a source for that quotation.
I'd change it to: 
"In concrete terms, even though Lisp compilers in 1987 were about as good as C compilers, there are many more compiler experts who want to make C compilers better than there are those who want to make Lisp compilers better."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Niels.bom (talk • contribs) 22:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The fact that you are not a native English speaker, as you said, does not preclude you being 100% correct! What an awful sentence that is! Unfortunately, it is attributed as a direct quote to Richard Gabriel in his article. I will look again to see if I can find a source for the quotation, no disrespect intended, as I realize you tried to do that, but that was in 2009. 
This is just a symptom of a larger problem with this article, it really needs some tidying up and context, particularly as time passes and memories of what was fresh in 1990 become less so. Alternatively, this could be merged into one of several other articles, as other comments on this talk page suggested. Eventually, something should be done, as it is a shame to lose it, but it is difficult to understand as is.
Without reading the talk page, I would have lacked the necessary context and background to comprehend the article. --FeralOink (talk) 13:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

text: Passing by, 12 years later (damn!): strong agree! The current writing of this article is too contextual to understand the actual meaning of the essay, and its significance. I would not have guessed that there had existed a rivalry in the US computer science in the 1980s (Bell Labs with C and UNIX / MIT and Stanford AI with LISP and GNU), with such historical significance that it shaped the subsequent software world, and to which this “Worse is better” essay belonged. Shouldn’t there be an article on that rivalry, to start with? Maëlan 09:25, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weird sentence in quotation. 

message: This article is essentially RPG's essay...apparently a fan decided that it would make a good page, and a Wikipedia editor allowed it in a moment of weakness? Keeping it as a single article isn't very helpful for an outsider trying to understand why this essay was written and how it fits into its context. It should be merged / expanded into an article covering the history of software development philosophy. I'm fairly skeptical that Worse is Better deserves any more than a section or subsection in such an article. 98.210.157.185 (talk) 06:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This is similar to the earlier complaint that it's not notable but... I don't know what role you think "Wikipedia Editors" play, but generally no one single person or entity is in charge of approving or disapproving of an article. YOU DO! WE'RE THE WIKIPEDIA EDITORS WHO DECIDE WHAT'S NOTABLE!!! If you don't think it is, put you're justification here, try to get feedback and delete it yourself!!!  Good Grief! I find it hard to take you're argument seriously when you don't understand the basics of Wikipedia here. I'd also argue that it was particularly notable when and as Wikipedia was established, and the web technologies and I'd say Wikipedia itself was founded on the principles described in this essay. It had outsized influence on the software (particularly Open Source) and internet worlds at the time, and it's hard to discount such influences on Wikipedia itself. Therefore, I propose that we actually do include this essay, perhaps with the commentary already published here, as a major part of the article itself, so petty arguments about "sources" are eliminated. Cuvtixo (talk) 23:51, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge / Expansion 

message: The original Multics project history and Bell Labs dropping out, then creating Unix story should be presented here - it's another example of "functionally complete" vs. "ship it and fix issues with after you have a working code base"  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.248.107.194 (talk) 12:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multics / Unix as exemplars? 

message: This is something of a ridiculous criticism because the SUBJECT IS IT'S OWN SOURCE. You can't really expect an article about an essay to have much source other than itself and related articles by the author, which indeed are cited.  The other alternative is to include the entire article here. It's as short as many Wikipedia articles, and why should we dredge up citations when the essay in it's entirety be presented? No citations: the source article itself. Cuvtixo (talk) 23:52, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing "This article relies largely or entirely on a single source"