Worse is better (also called the New Jersey style[1]) is a term conceived by Richard P. Gabriel in a 1989 essay[2] to describe the dynamics of software acceptance.
[3] The essay was included into the 1994 book The UNIX-HATERS Handbook, and has been referred to as the origin of the notion of a conceptual split between developers on the east and west coasts of the United States.
A section of the article, titled "The Rise of 'Worse is Better'", was widely disseminated beginning in 1991, after Jamie Zawinski found it in Gabriel's files at Lucid Inc. and emailed it to friends and colleagues.
[3] Gabriel argued that early Unix and C, developed by Bell Labs, are examples of the worse-is-better design approach.
[8] The UNIX-HATERS Handbook includes Worse is Better as an appendix, and frames the concept in terms of worse-is-better in the form of Unix being "evolutionarily superior" to its competition.