“Worse is better” systems incrementally improve by responding to user needs.
Are your conclusions meant to be generalized, and, if so, in what way?
For example, web browsers adopted the Robustness Principle and now we have the messy result of software that has to know how to interpret its formats, rather than distributing the format with the interpreter (Joel Spolsky’s rant titled “Martian Headsets” gives a good summary of why this is such a bad approach, and what we are stuck with). The web browser example is actually not mine; it is Alan Kay’s classic example of Doghouse and Pyramid architecture from his classic OOPSLA talk, “The Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet” (google it). He essentially argues, implicitly, the Smalltalk way is better — and before Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web Browser, Xerox PARC had an Object Browser built into the operating system via the Smalltalk system.