Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 2 Dec 2001 21:12:58 +0100 (CET) | From | Ingo Molnar <> | Subject | Re: Coding style - a non-issue |
| |
On Sun, 2 Dec 2001, Rik van Riel wrote:
> Note that this screams for some minimal kind of modularity on the > source level, trying to limit the "magic" to as small a portion of the > code base as possible.
Linux is pretty modular. It's not dogmatically so, nor does it attempt to guarantee absolute or externally visible modularity, but most parts of it are pretty modular.
> Also, natural selection tends to favour the best return/effort ratio, > not the best end result. [...]
there is no 'effort' involved in evolution. Nature does not select along the path we went. It's exactly this property why it took 5 billion years to get here, while Linux took just 10 years to be built from grounds up. The fact is that bacteria took pretty random paths for 2 billion years to get to the next level. That's alot of 'effort'. So *once* we have something that is better, it does not matter how long it took to get there.
( This kind of 'development effort' is not the same as 'robustness', ie. the amount of effort needed to keep it at the complexity level it is, against small perturbations in the environment - but that is a different kind of effort. )
> [...] Letting a kernel take shape due to natural selection pressure > could well result in a system which is relatively simple, works well > for 95% of the population, has the old cruft level at the upper limit > of what's deemed acceptable and completely breaks for the last 5% of > the population.
no. An insect that is 95.1% effective digesting banana leafs in the jungle will completely eradicate a competing insect that is 95.0% effective digesting banana leaves, within a few hundred generations. (provided both insects have exactly the same parameters otherwise.) And it does not matter whether it took 100 million years to get to 95.1%, or just one lucky set of alpha particles hitting a specific DNA part of the original insect.
Ingo
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |