Evolution writes very poor code. So why is biology research rewarding? Because biologists aren't looking at the code, but the product. For example, I really l

Evolution writes very poor code. So why is biology research rewarding? Because biologists aren't looking at the code, but the product. For example, I really liked NN 4.7. It was responsive and consistent. But the codebase was so poor, that they rewrote it - and nuked themselves. Joel on Software wrote an essay about how as a codebase evolves to cope with more and more special cases, it gets more complex and ugly. But that's because it needs to be (according to Joel). In other words, no one cares about your code. They care about what it does. If it does something really cool and amazing, people will want to know how you did it. What it "does" can go beyond performance and features - what code does can include realizing a new user-interaction approach, or a new algorithm, or a new way to model something. Imagine the jury-rigged prototype of the first telephone, light-bulb, aeroplane - the slickness of the implementation just doesn't matter. The invention matters. If, one day, we work out how DNA codes for a brain, we may be able to code it better. But what we lack is any idea of how to do it at all. Poor code that works is infinitely better and more cool than no idea. This is why biologists might be interested in the poor code: How the hell did he do that?