--
-Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have -
-happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ
-Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all-
-individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 10:15:51 -0800
From: glen mccready <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: ...ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback
cycle.
Resent-Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 10:16:12 -0800 (PST)
Resent-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Forwarded-by: Darren Boyd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0111.3/1957.html
From: Linus Torvalds <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Rik van Riel wrote:
> I'm very interested too, though I'll have to agree with Larry that
> Linux really isn't going anywhere in particular and seems to be
> making progress through sheer luck.
Hey, that's not a bug, that's a FEATURE!
You know what the most complex piece of engineering known to man in the
whole solar system is?
Guess what - it's not Linux, it's not Solaris, and it's not your car.
It's you. And me.
And think about how you and me actually came about - not through any
complex design.
Right. "sheer luck".
Well, sheer luck, AND:
- free availability and _crosspollination_ through sharing of
"source code", although biologists call it DNA.
- a rather unforgiving user environment, that happily replaces bad
versions of us with better working versions and thus culls the herd
(biologists often call this "survival of the fittest")
- massive undirected parallel development ("trial and error")
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.
Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest.
And don't EVER make the mistake that you can design something better
than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with
a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence _much_ too much
credit.
Quite frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their
engineering practices or their coding style.
Linus
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