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RE: Is intelligence and design over-rated?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Is intelligence and design over-rated?
• From: "Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@S...>
• Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 16:39:26 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Piatt, Darwin [mailto:dpiatt@f...]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 3:19 PM
> To: 'Champion, Mike'; xml-dev@l...
> Subject: RE:  Is intelligence and design over-rated?
> 
> 
> Isn't that why the 'systems design cycle' is called a cycle?  
> Try it, fix it, try it, fix it. Sounds like evolution to me.  


Well, yeah, me too!  But there's at least one frequent poster here -- who
works in an industry where they LITERALLY bury their mistakes, I believe --
who has taken me to task for similar assertions. On the other hand, software
developers (aka engineers) generally do at least pay lip service to the
notion that software is designed rather than produced via selective breeding
experiments <grin>.  On one hand, I would HOPE that the folks writing
software that people's lives depend on are "designing" it rather than
evolving it.  On the other hand, Torvald's post got me thinking ... maybe
we're safer relying on the Nth generation of software that got naturally
selected rather on an early generation of software produced by a purportedly
rational design process.

My other motivation for posting this is the dear old W3C.  As we frequently
discuss here, there are a number of intelligent folks there who are quite
happy to design new specs rather than simply cross-breeding the survivors of
previous standards experiments.  If the "evolution" rather than "intelligent
design" orientation is more correct/useful, that is quite dangerous... we're
testing new drugs on ourselves rather than the lab rats. 

  

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