I stumbled upon an excerpt from an article called “The Rise of Worse is Better.” The author, Richard, reflects on why C and Unix succeeded. The article discusses the four major goals of software design: simplicity, correctness, consistency, and completeness. Two highly representative schools of thought have developed around these four goals: the MIT school and the New Jersey school (where Bell Labs is located). The MIT school believes that software must be absolutely correct and consistent first, then complete, and finally simple. It also “satirizes” the New Jersey school for doing the opposite – they set simplicity as the highest priority, even willing to sacrifice correctness for the sake of simplicity. In other words, software quality (popularity) does not increase with more features; from the perspective of practicality and ease of use, software with fewer features is actually more favored by users and the market.
So now you can see why some people always complain that Go can’t do this and can’t do that, is missing this and missing that. It’s because Rob Pike from Bell Labs is a through-and-through New Jersey school person. So to sum up, Go’s characteristics are:
- Simple
- Very simple
- Nothing but simple
There are several follow-up articles on “Worse is Better”:
- Original: Richard P. Gabriel. The Rise of Worse is Better. 1989. https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html
- Follow-up 1: Nickieben Bourbaki. Worse is Better is Worse. 1991. https://dreamsongs.com/Files/worse-is-worse.pdf
- Follow-up 2: Richard P. Gabriel. Is Worse Really Better? 1992. https://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdf
- Follow-up 3: Richard P. Gabriel. Worse is Better. 2000. https://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html
- Follow-up 4: Richard P. Gabriel. Back to the Future: Worse (Still) is Better! Dec 04, 2000. https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/ProWorseIsBetterPosition.pdf
- Follow-up 5: Richard P. Gabriel. Back to the Future: Is Worse (Still) Better? Aug 2, 2002. https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/WorseIsBetterPositionPaper.pdf
So which school do you lean towards?
偶然间读到了一篇文章的节选片段《The Rise of Worse is Better》，这篇文章的作者 Richard 围绕为什么 C 和 Unix 能够成功展开了反思。这篇文章中聊到了几个软件设计的四大目标简单、正确、一致和完整。其中围绕四个目标发展出了两大很有代表性的流派: MIT 流派和 New Jersey 流派（贝尔实验室所在地）。MIT 流派认为软件要绝对的正确和一致，然后才是完整，最后才是简单；而一并"讽刺"了 New Jersey 流派反其道而行之的做法，他们将简单的优先级设为最高，为了简单甚至能够放弃正确。换句话说，软件的质量（受欢迎的程度）并不随着功能的增加而提高，从实用性以及易用性来考虑，功能较少的软件反而更受到使用者和市场青睐。
所以你看到为什么总是有些人总是抱怨 Go 这也不行那也不行，这也没有那也没有了。因为来自贝尔实验室的 Rob Pike 就是一个彻彻底底的 New Jersey 流派中人。所以总结起来 Go 的特点就是:
- 简单
- 非常简单
- 除了简单就是简单
然后围绕 Worse is Better 还有好几篇后续文章:
- 原始文章: Richard P. Gabriel. The Rise of Worse is Better. 1989. https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html
- 后续 1: Nickieben Bourbaki. Worse is Better is Worse. 1991. https://dreamsongs.com/Files/worse-is-worse.pdf
- 后续 2: Richard P. Gabriel. Is Worse Really Better? 1992. https://dreamsongs.com/Files/IsWorseReallyBetter.pdf
- 后续 3: Richard P. Gabriel. Worse is Better. 2000. https://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html
- 后续 4: Richard P. Gabriel. Back to the Future: Worse (Still) is Better! Dec 04, 2000. https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/ProWorseIsBetterPosition.pdf
- 后续 5: Richard P. Gabriel. Back to the Future: Is Worse (Still) Better? Aug 2, 2002. https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/WorseIsBetterPositionPaper.pdf
所以你更倾向于哪个学派？