Thank you Yossi for writing this piece. It's about time that Worse is Better argument was debunked. Worse isn't better, portable, free (libre, gratis, or at least really cheap) is better.
What many people forget is that during the time frame Worse is Better talks about, Lisp machines cost as much as two or more houses. You couldn't get a decent Lisp system on affordable hardware until MCL, and then you still needed a fairly high-end Mac to run it on.
OTOH, Unix and C-based software ran on a bunch of different machines, which you either already had or could acquire inexpensively. The software was easy to get and inexpensive as well. Then 4.3BSD and Linux came along, and you couldn't beat that on price.
What many people forget is that during the time frame Worse is Better talks about, Lisp machines cost as much as two or more houses. You couldn't get a decent Lisp system on affordable hardware until MCL, and then you still needed a fairly high-end Mac to run it on.
OTOH, Unix and C-based software ran on a bunch of different machines, which you either already had or could acquire inexpensively. The software was easy to get and inexpensive as well. Then 4.3BSD and Linux came along, and you couldn't beat that on price.