5 ms·

Organic units should not be admired for their design. DNA is the worst spaghetti code imaginable. The design is such a hack, that it's easier to let the unit

Organic units should not be admired for their design. DNA is the worst spaghetti code imaginable. The design is such a hack, that it's easier to let the unit die and just create new ones every few years.

btown 4y ago
"The creatures outside looked from DNA to k8s YAML, and from k8s YAML to DNA, and from DNA to k8s YAML again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
borissk 4y ago
"Let the unit die and just create new ones every few years" is a brilliant solution to many issues in complex systems. Practically all software created by humans behaves the same way - want a new version of your browser or a new major version of your OS kernel or whatever else - you have to restart them.
- rswail 4y ago
  it's almost like Erlang supervisors all the way down :)
andrekandre 4y ago
its a pretty amazing hack though the human body can scale from 1 cell to several trillion without going down for maintenance even once all while differentiating to different functions it can take a high level of damage and heal without needing a shutdown as well, most software crashes completely at the first exception cells give you that highly scalable and fault tolerant system that we all want
- ska 4y ago
  > without going down for maintenance even once doesn't it go down for maintenance approximately once a day?
  - alluro2 4y ago
    It's more of a "sleep mode". There are still a lot of wakeups, and cron jobs running clean up of temporary files, cache management and backup routines. Background services still run.
charlieflowers 4y ago
> it's easier to let the unit die and just create new ones every few years Cattle, not pets
ramraj07 4y ago
Poor comparison - DNA is compiled assembly language code. It is meant to be spaghetti to save space and reuse proteins for multiple functions. In that regard it’s the most efficient compiler in the universe.
techie128 4y ago
Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?
ssivark 4y ago
And it’s still more adaptable/robust/intelligent than almost any system we’ve built so far.
simonh 4y ago
Death isn’t a solution to maintenance issues, there are some organisms including animals that live many hundreds of years and possibly indefinitely. The reason seems to be to increase the rate of iterations, to keep up the pace of adaptation and evolution.

btown 4y ago

"The creatures outside looked from DNA to k8s YAML, and from k8s YAML to DNA, and from DNA to k8s YAML again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

borissk 4y ago

"Let the unit die and just create new ones every few years" is a brilliant solution to many issues in complex systems. Practically all software created by humans behaves the same way - want a new version of your browser or a new major version of your OS kernel or whatever else - you have to restart them.

rswail 4y ago
it's almost like Erlang supervisors all the way down :)

andrekandre 4y ago

its a pretty amazing hack though the human body can scale from 1 cell to several trillion without going down for maintenance even once all while differentiating to different functions it can take a high level of damage and heal without needing a shutdown as well, most software crashes completely at the first exception cells give you that highly scalable and fault tolerant system that we all want

ska 4y ago
> without going down for maintenance even once doesn't it go down for maintenance approximately once a day?
- alluro2 4y ago
  It's more of a "sleep mode". There are still a lot of wakeups, and cron jobs running clean up of temporary files, cache management and backup routines. Background services still run.

charlieflowers 4y ago

> it's easier to let the unit die and just create new ones every few years Cattle, not pets

ramraj07 4y ago

Poor comparison - DNA is compiled assembly language code. It is meant to be spaghetti to save space and reuse proteins for multiple functions. In that regard it’s the most efficient compiler in the universe.

techie128 4y ago

Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?

ssivark 4y ago

And it’s still more adaptable/robust/intelligent than almost any system we’ve built so far.

simonh 4y ago

Death isn’t a solution to maintenance issues, there are some organisms including animals that live many hundreds of years and possibly indefinitely. The reason seems to be to increase the rate of iterations, to keep up the pace of adaptation and evolution.