We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
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We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
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Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#2But all the little bits of complexity ... they slowly accreted until it all got out of control, and we got comfortable with systems that were impossible to understand.
I'm convinced that all systems of any significant complexity can only be created in evolutionary steps, and that process always leaves vestigial traces behind. The most complex computing environments always have an almost organic quality.
I strongly recommend Errol Morris' film "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" for insight into the paradox that order seems to somehow magically emerge from chaos.
Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#3Reminds me of my usual answer when asked by people - "Why does 'x' computing device not work properly?"
Because a hell of a lot of the code running on it was written a month or so late, in a panic, at 4am, by someone who was hungover and wired on coffee.
Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#4Unfortunately, worse is better. Sigh. Here's to VPRI/STEPS changing things sometime in the next 30 years, as much of a longshot that is.
Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#5But all the little bits of complexity ... they slowly accreted until it all got out of control, and we got comfortable with systems that were impossible to understand. I'm convinced that all systems of any significant complexity can only be created in evolutionary steps, and that process always leaves vestigial traces behind. The most complex computing environments always have an almost organic quality. I strongly re…
Thanks for the film recommendation. In a similar vein, I'd recommend Kevin Kelly's book, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World, which deals a lot with complexity of large systems and their parallels to biology and evolution.
I do think it's possible to create a system of "significant complexity" in a clean and not so evolutionary way, but only after creating a version or two that were developed incrementally, which necessarily end up with a lot of cruft.
Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#6It's time to consider a new iteration, to create what comes after unix...
Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#7Gall's Law is relevant here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galls_law
A complex system that works is invariably found to have
evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse
proposition also appears to be true: A complex system
designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to
work. You have to start over, beginning with a working
simple system.Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#8This is because that what happens in engineering. Even simple things like shovels have evolved. The blade has been shaped to into the dirt. It's got a squiggly bend so it's balanced holding dirt. Stepping up a bit further we have things like clocks. Sundials don't work in the dark so we made mechanical clocks. Those of course have bits of complexity to make them easier to read and more accurate. Now consider computers, they're blindingly fast. We really can't begin to comprehend how much the state of a CPU changes in the blink of an eye. Same goes for memory. If we had to track that as many items as bits in real life, we fail hopelessly. To compensate for this power, we created management systems. Of course the management systems themselves fast and large so we have management systems for those too. The very power of computers makes them complex. All we've been doing is desperately trying to simplify them. Complaining that those simplifications are complicated, ignores just how complicate they would be if we didn't.
Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#9This is because that what happens in engineering. Even simple things like shovels have evolved. The blade has been shaped to into the dirt. It's got a squiggly bend so it's balanced holding dirt. Stepping up a bit further we have things like clocks. Sundials don't work in the dark so we made mechanical clocks. Those of course have bits of complexity to make them easier to read and more accurate. Now consider computer…
i think the point is that when designing clocks we didn't just attach some gears and a timing mechanism and some hands to a sundial, we threw the sundial out. computers are complex because we hardly ever remove anything, and we still bare their cost aeons after they're relevant.
Re: We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
#10Unfortunately, worse is better. Sigh. Here's to VPRI/STEPS changing things sometime in the next 30 years, as much of a longshot that is.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? It's up to Alan Kay, who initially brought us the insights to help us out of this mess. The brightest minds are working at Color and other ways to make cat photo sharing easier. And that's what's getting funded. It's embarrassing. And we have only ourselves and our greed to blame.