“Good design is timeless,” writes Paul Graham in an article titled Design Philosophy (about the Arc language, which he participated in designing). If, he continues, “you want something timeless you can’t pander to the limitations of some hypothetical “average” user. It’s too vague a target.” As an example he uses two different cars from 1973: a Porsche and a Cadillac – of which the former is “obviously superior” according to Paul. He goes on to say this about computer languages:

The only reliable plan is to design for performance. Performance doesn’t mean speed; that’s taking the metaphor too literally. Speed counts, but a programming language is first of all a tool for thinking in. We want thinking in Arc to feel like driving a 911.

There’s something that bugs me about this – that designing for performance should result in timeless designs – but I can’t put my finger on it yet.