Re: Coding style - a non-issue

Ingo Molnar
2001-12-04T09:21:05Z

On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Daniel Phillips wrote:

> [...] Please see my post above where I point out 'evolution isn't
> random'. Your genes have a plan, if only a vague one. It goes
> something like this: "we'll allow random variations, but only along
> certain lines, within limits, and in certain combinations, and we'll
> try to stick to variations that haven't killed us in the past."

so what you say in essence is that "evolution isnt random, it's random"
;-) The fact that the brownean motion is 'vaguely directed' (ie. evolution
has a limited amount of 'memory' of past experience coded into the DNA)
does not make it less random. Randomness does not have to be completely
undirected - perhaps you know a different definition for 'random'. Just
the fact that we got from bacteria to humans and from bacteria to trees
shows that it's not only random, it's also unstable and chaotic. (the same
initial conditions resulted in multiple, wildly different and almost
completely unrelated set of end results.)

and nobody claimed Linux development was totally (chryptographically)
random. We just claim that Linux development has a fair dose of randomness
and unpredictability besides having a fair dose of structure, and that its
development model is much closer to evolution than to the formal methods
of software development.

at which point i think we finally agree?

Ingo