Now that is an HN worthy post! :D My feeling is that this is indeed a genetic algorithm, however it's prone to mutation (I.E. polymorphism which diverge furthe

Now that is an HN worthy post! :D My feeling is that this is indeed a genetic algorithm, however it's prone to mutation (I.E. polymorphism which diverge further to form different species) via duplication errors and/or cosmic ray triggered changes. This gives the algorithm branching and versioning properties in which multiple versions run in parallel thread execution where certain threads die out through natural selection while others continue as more threads are spawned via the above polymorphism. Naturally, this process is quite messy and you end up with a multitude of different functions that aren't immediately obvious in function. This may also lead to a lot of inactive functions that don't return or are never called (I.E. "Junk DNA").