The Rise of “Worse is Better” is a famous essay by Richard Gabriel – Distinguished Engineer and Principle Investigator at Sun Microsystems, which closely related to the “It’s Not Software” article that I’ve just blogged about.
The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing.