[FRIAM] IT is Not Sustainable
Eric Smith
desmith at santafe.edu
Thu Dec 26 12:14:09 EST 2019
Hi Nick,
There probably are many such studies that people on this list will know of from deeper traditions in Computer Science, but the one I happen to know about is solo work by David Ackley of UNM. He did a study of the replacement statistics of C libraries in open-source software, explicitly looking for how the causal dependencies in an evolving system, not master-planned, but constantly sieved for internal consistency, would lead to punctuated equilibrium and landslide dynamics as changes accumulated.
I don’t know how much of this Dave published; I know of it through a few public presentations he made at SFI events. Perhaps between 10 and 14 years ago? Could be that I am off, and that it is in the 5-year interval earlier than that.
Best,
Eric
> On Dec 26, 2019, at 11:53 AM, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Has anybody written for us defrocked English majors an account of the evolution of software. It must be subject to the same klugy processes that organismic evolution is but it also must be different because, with software evolution you can, SOMETIMES, go back to the beginning and start again. Wildly Naïve Question: If one “sequenced” today’s Windows, how many DOS “genes” would one find? I note, for instance, that still, after 30 years, in order to identify New Mexico as one’s state, to most websites, one still has to scroll down a list of states, and last week, I ran into a list of countries in which US was not the first item. Just like the good old days. I assume that developers just keep taking that old piece of crap off the shelf and sticking it into their programs.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
>
>
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
> Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2019 8:44 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IT is Not Sustainable
>
>
> June 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message). 5ESS used in a mobile telephone network. The 5ESS Switching System is a Class 5 telephone electronic switching system developed by ...
> -----------------------------------
> Frank Wimberly
>
> My memoir:
> https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly <https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly>
>
> My scientific publications:
> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2>
>
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 8:36 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>> Frank writes:
>>
>> “This was the telephone network in question.“
>>
>> With the mobile carriers and VOIP, I wonder how much of that code is still used? I once worked for a small company that wrote software to do billing for long distance telephone carriers. I was amazed by the seemingly arbitrary complexity. Complex at a policy and inter-organizational level, not just the software.
>>
>> Marcus
>>
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com>>
>> Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>> Date: Thursday, December 26, 2019 at 5:39 AM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IT is Not Sustainable
>>
>> At Bell Labs we sure didn't pay anyone by LOC. We also had code reviews and software tools to enforce standards and very high pay. With a brand new PhD I made more than all but the 3 most senior members of the CS faculty at Pitt where I was a grad student. This was the telephone network in question.
>>
>> Despite the high pay I disliked software administration methodology. The disagreements between the software tool developers (version control, integration of subsystems, compilers, etc) and the implementors of the applications, such as call processing, were epic. Recall that Bell Labs invented C and Unix. After 18 months I returned to Pittsburgh to work at Carnegie Mellon in Robotics for two thirds the salary.
>>
>> Number 5 ESS was first deployed in March 1982, 4 years after work began. I suspect that it didn't have 200 million lines of code then, but close to it. Maybe Dave doesn't consider it an IT project but many of the software tools that were developed were included in later Unix releases, I believe.
>>
>> It's going to be a beautiful day in Santa Fe.
>>
>> Frank
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------
>> Frank Wimberly
>>
>> My memoir:
>> https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly <https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly>
>>
>> My scientific publications:
>> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2>
>>
>> Phone (505) 670-9918
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 1:28 AM Gary Schiltz <gary at naturesvisualarts.com <mailto:gary at naturesvisualarts.com>> wrote:
>>> Spot on.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 2:29 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>>>> Most programmers won't struggle to rationalize or improve code written by other people. The problem is that people are selfish. They think that their 10K LOC problem is beautiful and nimble, but that 1M LOC was once that too. It's the behavior of teenagers.
>>>>
>>>> On 12/25/19, 10:47 PM, "Friam on behalf of Russell Standish" <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of lists at hpcoders.com.au <mailto:lists at hpcoders.com.au>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> It's all about the LOC! Actually, I kind of agree - having worked on
>>>> some MegaLOC codebases that functionally seemed to be no more complex
>>>> than a 10KLOC project I'm involved in, the 10KLOC project is much more
>>>> nimble - compile times are far less, making changes to the code easier
>>>> and bugs less troublesome to winkle out.
>>>>
>>>> I've also refactored or rewritten pieces of code to slash the LOC by a
>>>> factor of 3 or more for that particular section (eg 3KLOC -> 1KLOC) -
>>>> but usually when bugs and problems kept on cropping up in that
>>>> section.
>>>>
>>>> Even though the LOC is an entirely bogus measurement - if you paid a
>>>> programmer by LOC, you'd get boilerplate and crappy comments.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
>>>> Principal, High Performance Coders
>>>> Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au <mailto:hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au>
>>>> Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au <http://www.hpcoders.com.au/>
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
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