News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ask HN: Evolution writes very poor code. So why is biology research rewarding?.

Re:Ask HN: Evolution writes very poor code. So why is biol... by paulgb on Saturday May 30, 2009 @03:38PM (#634030)
Evolution may write poor code, but it can accomplish some really cool stuff with it. The human brain, for example. If a programmer had managed to recreate the human brain in code, even if he did it in spaghetti-coded COBOL, people would want to have a look.

Also, evolution isn't always elegant, but it often is. Think of the symmetry and self-similarity found so often in nature.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Evolution writes very poor code. So why is biol... by amichail on Saturday May 30, 2009 @03:41PM (#634032)
The very poor code I'm referring to is in the genotype (i.e., the DNA sequence). You can get an elegant phenotype (i.e., the resulting creature) from a very messy genotype.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Evolution writes very poor code. So why is biol... by bored on Saturday May 30, 2009 @04:05PM (#634049)
If you see things that way, then yes, DNA code is not very elegant or parsimonious. There are plenty of sequences that don't do anything (as far as we know).
[ Parent | on HN ]