4 ms·
But all the little bits of complexity ... they slowly accreted until it all got out of control, and we got comfortable with systems that were impossible to unde
by cageface 14y ago
But all the little bits of complexity ... they slowly accreted until it all got out of control, and we got comfortable with systems that were impossible to understand.
I'm convinced that all systems of any significant complexity can only be created in evolutionary steps, and that process always leaves vestigial traces behind. The most complex computing environments always have an almost organic quality.
I strongly recommend Errol Morris' film "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" for insight into the paradox that order seems to somehow magically emerge from chaos.
- ehsanu1 14y agoThanks for the film recommendation. In a similar vein, I'd recommend Kevin Kelly's book, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World, which deals a lot with complexity of large systems and their parallels to biology and evolution. I do think it's possible to create a system of "significant complexity" in a clean and not so evolutionary way, but only after creating a version or two that were developed incrementally, which necessarily end up with a lot of cruft.
- toemetoch 14y agoRelated, but not completely on topic: "All watched over by machines of loving grace" by Adam Curtis. "Bumblebee Economics" by Bernd Heinrich