

New term to describe bad programming: Biological - __
http://doubtingtommaso.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-term-to-describe-bad-programming.html

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donaldc
He has a point for smaller-scale programming. Certainly, even when designing
part of a larger system, one should aim to be as clear and well-structured as
possible.

But beyond a certain scale, complex systems, including complex software, must
be grown and not master-planned. This is one of the main advantages of
iterative design and development.

Organic life passed this level of complexity long ago. Yes, evolution is dumb
enough that it has passed up some obvious improvements. But humans are not (at
least not yet) so smart that they could design even a bacterium from scratch,
without resorting to iteration, and trial-and-error.

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stcredzero
Actually, we are designing a bacterium from scratch. But to do it, we are
doing some cut and paste from previous examples.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_is_on_the_verge_of_cre...](http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_is_on_the_verge_of_creating_synthetic_life.html)

There is, however, a modicum of refactoring.

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bitdiddle
I think the argument is totally flawed. Brains and eyeballs are biological.
Perhaps biology is more bottoms up than top down or more like generate and
test, yet it produces systems of incredible complexity that are remarkably
robust. For example a human heart beats ~ 1 billion times, I've yet to see a
human designed and architected pump do that. We just don't understand very
well yet how the liver and pancreas work and western medicine is particularly
weak in taking a holistic or systems view to the body.

Software, bad or good, is not like biology and it's not like construction.
Software is mathematics.

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TrevorJ
I don't think that characterizing biological systems as having no order
whatsoever is exactly accurate. I understand the point he is making, but I'm
not sure the parallels hold up particularly well.

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dejb
I've certainly worked with some programmers who's approach seemed more like
evolution and intelligent design.

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DannoHung
Heh, best argument against creationism yet: If God were omnipotent and
omniscient and God designed the human body, then it wouldn't be such a
phenomenal mess!

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Scriptor
Or maybe the Universe was a hastily done outsourcing job?

Seriously though, as messy as organ systems and biochemistry may be, the weird
thing is that it all works by itself, using basic chemical properties. I
remember how some textbooks can make it sound like proteins and molecules are
ordered around in a cell, but in reality everything just floats around, is
attracted and repelled to other stuff in the right places, and it works.

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rw
So, basically, we need to refactor the human body.

I am quite alright with that.

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pavel_lishin
I would be alright with that as well, if every piece of software I'd ever
written was 100% bug free. I envy your perfect track record.

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rw
Make sure you can ship after every commit!

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muhamm
-> _"A good developer would never put the end of the digestive system right next to the start of the reproduction system - not even if that would require fewer lines of code (which it undoubtedly did)."_

Whatever point he's trying to make in this post - and I'm not going to take
the time to try to figure it out - I'm sure there's a simpler way of saying
it.

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philwelch
Basically, "biological" describes a system that works decently, and which has
grown through incremental changes, and yet is a poorly architected mess
inside. It describes something that appears to be great from the way it works
and the way it looks on the outside, even if the internals are a mess that
require 10 years of schooling and residency to fully understand and maintain
;)

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stcredzero
Not even that! 10 years and continual refresher courses and on-the-job
training for a lifetime -- just to have an _inkling_ and at best a _hazy but
uncanny knack_ for fixing. But even this is not even enough in _all_ cases.

