It's always a little amusing when the Open Source Tea Party bemoans the lack of "the UNIX way" and someone else with actual historical experience (and not misguided nostalgia) brings perspective.
On a related note, X11 was never good and there's a whole chapter in the UNIX-HATERS Handbook explaining why.
It was never good? Weird. Works fine for me.
When will Wayland earn the label "good"? I don't think it currently qualifies.
It works fine for you because...
1. You're using X11 with hardware that is fantastically newer than anything available at the time the UNIX-HATERS Handbook was written.
2. Every graphics vendor that still supports X11 is shipping workarounds for bugs in Xorg.
I used to have a citation for that second one but it went away when Hector Martin dropped off the face of the Internet.