Python Creator Guido van Rossum Asks: Is 'Worse is Better' Still True for Programming Languages?

In 1989 a computer scientist argued that more functionality in software actually lowers usability and practicality — leading to the counterintuitive proposition that "worse is better". But is that still true?
Python's original creator Guido van Rossum addressed the question last month in a lightning talk at the annual Python Language Summit 2025.Guido started by recounting earlier periods of Python development from 35 years ago, where he used UNIX "almost exclusively" and thus "Python was