Re: Coding style - a non-issue

Horst von Brand (vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl)
Sat, 01 Dec 2001 20:11:01 -0300

Tim Hockin <thockin@hockin.org> said:
> "Linus Torvalds" at Nov 30, 2001 04:50:34 PM said:
> > I'm deadly serious: we humans have _never_ been able to replicate
> > something more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural
> > selection did it without even thinking.
>
> a very interesting argument, but not very pertinent - we don't have 10's of
> thousands of year or even really 10's of years. We have to use intellect
> to root out the obviously bad ideas, and even more importantly the
> bad-but-not-obviously-bad ideas.

If you look at what people in the evolutionistic algorithms camp are doing,
you'll see them consider "mutations" that force movement in the "best"
direction (steepest ascent), not just at random, and similarly other
"intelligent" genetic operators.

In any case, what Linus is saying isn't just "go and change stuff at
random" either..., this is clearly a metaphor. An apt one.

-- 
Horst von Brand                             vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl
Casilla 9G, Vin~a del Mar, Chile                               +56 32 672616
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