Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
Letting Go of Control
Part 1/2
Didier Verna
1/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
Conclusion
Our software is out of control
This is only going to get worse
We should be afraid
We should be ashamed
2/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
The birth of a baby
A miracle of Nature
Darwin: Evolution is far from perfection
Up to 50% pregnancies lead to spontaneous abortion
3/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
The birth of a baby DOCUMENT
A miracle of DON KNUTH
When it doesn’t work, you don’t really know why
When it does work, you really don’t know why
4/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
The L
A
T
E
X biotope
And the viral propagation of styles
Cytoplasm
Nucleus
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\end{document}
%% Preamble
%% Body
Nuclear Envelope
Plasma Membrane
L
A
T
E
X documents as eukaryote cells
Styles as viral infection with new geneT
E
X material
5/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
Houston, we have a problem. . .
Classes, Styles, Conflicts: the biological
realm of L
A
T
E
X. In TUGBoat 31:2,
proceedings of TUG 2010, the T
E
X Users
Group Conference, San Francisco, July 2010.
L
A
T
E
X is a mess
Open Source software is a mess
Proprietary software’s gotta be a mess too
6/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
Houston, we have a problem. . .
Classes, Styles, Conflicts: the biological
realm of L
A
T
E
X. In TUGBoat 31:2,
proceedings of TUG 2010, the T
E
X Users
Group Conference, San Francisco, July 2010.
L
A
T
E
X is a mess
Open Source software is a mess
Proprietary software’s gotta be a mess too
6/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
Intermediate conclusion
Darwin / Jacob: Nature is a tinkerer
Alon: the tinkerer as an engineer
Verna: the engineer as a tinkerer
We should be ashamed!
7/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
Intermediate conclusion
Darwin / Jacob: Nature is a tinkerer
Alon: the tinkerer as an engineer
Verna: the engineer as a tinkerer
We should be ashamed!
7/8
Letting Go of
Control
Didier Verna
End of Part 1
Stephanie Forrest:
“As programmers, we like to think of software as the product
of our intelligent design, carefully crafted to meet
well-specified goals. In reality, software evolves
inadvertently through the actions of many individual
programmers, often leading to unanticipated consequences.
Large complex software systems are subject to constraints
similar to those faced by evolving biological systems, and
we have much to gain by viewing software through the lens
of evolutionary biology.”
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