[rayiner]

I'm talking about these two points from the paper, regarding the "Worse is Better" philosophy:

> Simplicity -- the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the implementation to be simple than the interface. Simplicity is the most important consideration in a design.

> Correctness -- the design must be correct in all observable aspects. It is slightly better to be simple than correct.

Dropbox is simple in implementation, at the cost of simplicity in the interface and correctness. E.g. it is simpler to simply punt on locked files in Windows. Tell the user to quit Word if they want their file to sync, instead of handling file locking at the protocol level. Likewise, it's simpler to detect changed files after the fact than write a filesystem driver to knows what blocks are changed. But it degrades the user experience (their computer burns clock cycles re-figuring-out information a real filesystem driver would've had).

The upside of all that is that Dropbox was simple to implement, simple to port, and simple to deploy, which made it popular:

> Therefore, the worse-is-better software first will gain acceptance, second will condition its users to expect less, and third will be improved to a point that is almost the right thing.