Re:How To Survive a Ground-Up Rewrite
by jacques_chester on Tuesday April 09, 2013 @01:20AM
(#5516558)
Incrementalism is sometimes called Burkean or Oakeshottian conservatism in political circles.
The analogy used is of a ship at sea. Replacing the ship in a single step, while it is underway, is impossible. Replacing too many planks at once is foolhardy. (I thought the analogy was Oakeshott's but I can't find the original source).
So instead you replace the planks one at a time. Yes, this is tremendously slow, wasteful and frustrating. But when the ship is a system on which you utterly rely, there is no other safe path.
Hayek expanded on the problems of pure rationalism more generally; it's a trap we as a profession tend to fall into. We substitute our preferences (for a tidy, orderly system) for an appraisal of actual reality. Real systems have accumulated complexity that cannot be wished away. Worse: the complexity is often essential and not merely accidental.
The analogy used is of a ship at sea. Replacing the ship in a single step, while it is underway, is impossible. Replacing too many planks at once is foolhardy. (I thought the analogy was Oakeshott's but I can't find the original source).
So instead you replace the planks one at a time. Yes, this is tremendously slow, wasteful and frustrating. But when the ship is a system on which you utterly rely, there is no other safe path.
Hayek expanded on the problems of pure rationalism more generally; it's a trap we as a profession tend to fall into. We substitute our preferences (for a tidy, orderly system) for an appraisal of actual reality. Real systems have accumulated complexity that cannot be wished away. Worse: the complexity is often essential and not merely accidental.