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Is Worse Better?

14 hours ago
http://funcall.blogspot.com/2025/10/is-worse-really-better.html
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  • #Programming Paradigms
  • #Common Lisp
  • #Software Design
  • Richard Gabriel's essay 'Worse is Better' contrasts the 'MIT approach' (correctness, consistency, simplicity, completeness) with the 'New Jersey approach' (simplicity prioritized over correctness, consistency, and completeness).
  • The MIT approach emphasizes correctness and completeness, while the New Jersey approach prioritizes simplicity of implementation.
  • An experiment compared the two approaches using different prompts for LLM-generated Common Lisp solutions to Advent of Code problems.
  • Gemini analyzed the solutions and preferred the MIT approach for its robustness, clarity, and maintainability.
  • The MIT solution used iterative algorithms (BFS and bottom-up DP), while the New Jersey solution used recursive DFS with memoization.
  • The MIT solution was deemed superior due to its immunity to stack overflow, better readability, and predictable performance.
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