I often think about software development in similar terms -- evolution versus intelligent design.
The weakness of evolution is that it takes millions of years, it's heavily dependent on initial conditions, there's lots of collateral damage, and most lines die out.
The weakness of intelligent design is that we're only so intelligent, which places a pretty low limit on the possible achievement. (And intelligence is generally regarded as close to a normal distribution, meaning that the smartest people can only handle a small multiple of the complexity of the average person).
Obviously, evolution and design need to be combined somewhat. The question is: how much of each, and at what times during a project? Do you spend 10% of the time quietly planning, 10% arguing with a small group of designers, and 80% trying things and trying to get feedback? Or is it more like 40%, 40%, and 20%? And how do you mix trying things with the designing things?
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I often think about software development in similar terms -- evolution versus intelligent design.
The weakness of evolution is that it takes millions of years, it's heavily dependent on initial conditions, there's lots of collateral damage, and most lines die out.
The weakness of intelligent design is that we're only so intelligent, which places a pretty low limit on the possible achievement. (And intelligence is generally regarded as close to a normal distribution, meaning that the smartest people can only handle a small multiple of the complexity of the average person).
Obviously, evolution and design need to be combined somewhat. The question is: how much of each, and at what times during a project? Do you spend 10% of the time quietly planning, 10% arguing with a small group of designers, and 80% trying things and trying to get feedback? Or is it more like 40%, 40%, and 20%? And how do you mix trying things with the designing things?
Evolutionary process is not just genetic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOZ3Xt6ZMBA&t=6m15s David Sloan on the evolution of egg laying hens.
See the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_equation