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>> yet it's clearly useful to have the concept of "the engine" even if you cannot drop it in any vehicle. Absolutely! I'm not arguing against modularity at all

>> yet it's clearly useful to have the concept of "the engine" even if you cannot drop it in any vehicle. Absolutely! I'm not arguing against modularity at all. I think the concept of discrete subsystems interacting is pretty much universal (organs, components, rooms, streets). >> there are instances of "bounded" composability; e.g. the tyres for my car likely fit many other similar vehicles, but not all. Again, completely agree. What I'm arguing against is uniformity of interface. You wouldn't connect a tyre to a wheel the same way you would mount an engine to a chassis.

ithkuil 6y ago
> What I'm arguing against is uniformity of interface. > You wouldn't connect a tyre to a wheel the same way you would mount an engine to a chassis. Yes, you're right, LEGO is extremely uniform, and no real system is _that_ uniform. And even a uniform interface doesn't mean any combination makes sense. Attaching a LEGO brick with wheels on the roof of a LEGO car is not different than soldering an axle on the roof of a car: technically possible but utterly useless. Actually, soldering an axle on the roof of a car is composing uniform interfaces: atoms in chemical bonds form a finite set of building blocks too!