Quality Archives - Page 12 of 19

Worse Is Better

In a section of an essay first written in 1989, the software designer Richard P. Gabriel described two ways to design. One aims for “the right thing.” The other he called “worse is better,” and he used early Unix and the C language as examples. In that approach, “It is slightly better to be simple than correct.” Another rule is: “Completeness can be sacrificed in favor of any other quality.”

Gabriel argued that the simpler approach “has better survival characteristics.” He concluded: “It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus.” The essay spread among programmers from 1991. In 2000 Gabriel answered himself under a pen name, in an essay called “Worse Is Better Is Worse.”

To the C Students

On May 21, 2001, President George W. Bush spoke at the Yale commencement, 33 years after his own Yale degree. “To those of you who received honors, awards, and distinctions, I say, well done,” he said. “And to the C students,” he went on, and the audience applauded, “I say, you, too, can be President of the United States.”

College students have a shorter version: “C’s get degrees.” A 2024 opinion piece in the student newspaper of The College of New Jersey explained it. “With minimal effort and average grades, one can still finish four years of college with a paper diploma.” The headline called it “a dangerous mentality.”

Close Enough

Close enough for government work. It is not worth spending more time to perfect this. The phrase appears in print in 1962, in NASA reports on the first American orbital flights.

Close enough for jazz. This is the musicians’ version. It has been in print since at least 1937. That year Billboard printed it as a stock musicians’ joke, said after the saxophones tune up.

Good enough for who it’s for. The job was not done perfectly, but it was done well enough for the people it was done for.

Wiktionary labels the government phrase “humorous” and “disparaging.” A popular story says it began in World War II as praise for exacting standards. Members of the American Dialect Society searched for evidence and found “nothing to support” it.

The Ugly Duckling

Between 1941 and 1945, eighteen American shipyards built 2,710 Liberty ships. The design was chosen for its “simple, low-cost construction.” The ships were made “assembly-line style, from prefabricated sections.” Joshua Smith of the American Merchant Marine Museum notes that they were throwaway ships with a five-year life expectancy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the ship “a dreadful looking object.” Time magazine called it the “Ugly Duckling.”

Early Liberty ships suffered cracks in the hull and deck. Three Liberty ships broke in half. Some ships sailed far longer than their five-year design life.

A New Way of Doing Business

On June 29, 1994, Secretary of Defense William Perry signed a memo titled “Specifications and Standards — A New Way of Doing Business.” It made performance specifications and commercial products the default. A performance specification says what an item must do, not how to make it. Detailed military specifications were allowed only “as a last resort, with an appropriate waiver.”

A 1997 Air War College paper gave examples of what the old system cost. The military had used its own specifications to buy “dog combs, tacos, fruitcakes.” A specification for white gloves “caused one manufacturer to set up a different assembly line.” The gloves cost $32 a pair. The same manufacturer sold “nearly identical gloves commercially for $20.”

Lowest Price Technically Acceptable

Federal agencies can buy goods and services by a method called “lowest price technically acceptable.” Each proposal is checked against the stated requirements and is either acceptable or not. The Federal Acquisition Regulation says that proposals are checked for acceptability but are “not ranked using the non-cost/price factors.” It also says: “Tradeoffs are not permitted.” The cheapest acceptable offer wins, even when another offer is better.

Outside the Department of Defense, a 2018 defense law limits the method. An agency may use it only when, among other conditions, it “would realize no, or minimal, value from a proposal that exceeds the minimum technical or performance requirements.” Buyers must avoid it, as far as practicable, for services such as cybersecurity and health care, and for personal protective equipment.

Satisficing

In 1956 Herbert Simon published “Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment” in Psychological Review. He wrote: “Evidently, organisms adapt well enough to ‘satisfice’; they do not, in general, ‘optimize.'”

The term joins satisfy and suffice. A person who satisfices stops searching when an option meets the need. In 1978 Simon received the Nobel Prize in economics “for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations.”

Fit for Ordinary Purposes

When a merchant sells goods, the Uniform Commercial Code adds an implied warranty that they are “merchantable.” This applies when the seller deals in goods of that kind. Section 2-314 says such goods must be “fit for the ordinary purposes for which such goods are used.”

Cornell Law School’s legal dictionary explains the standard. Merchantable goods “need not be outstanding or superior quality, they need only be fit for the ordinary purpose for which they are used.” In everyday terms, a toaster bought in a store must toast. It does not have to be the best toaster on the market.

Section 2-315 adds a separate warranty for a particular purpose. It applies only when the seller has reason to know that purpose and the buyer relies on the seller’s judgment.

Close, But No Cigar

You had one job. — Said when the one thing that was required did not happen.

Close, but no cigar. — Nearly right is still not right.

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. — In most things, a near miss earns nothing.

Nice try. — Often ironic. The effort is noted, and the result is still missing.

What have you done for me lately? — Past results do not count for long. The phrase is also the title of Janet Jackson’s 1986 single, which reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100.

The DARPA Grand Challenge

On March 13, 2004, 15 driverless vehicles set off across the desert to compete for a $1 million prize from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. None finished. The best vehicle covered only 7.5 miles, and the prize was not paid.

In 2005 the challenge was held again. Stanford University’s vehicle Stanley finished in 6 hours and 53 minutes and won $2 million.