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Mob Software
Hell O'World writes: "Wow! Mob Software." A concise submitter, how refreshing. To elaborate: an essay whose author argues that large software projects should be built, well, by a mob.
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I skimmed through the article, but this didn't make sense: if there are projects that are an order of magnitude or two larger than the space shuttle, and he argues that the space shuttle should have had 26,000 programmers instead of 260, does that mean that these larger projects should have 260,000 to 2.6 million programmers? Where are you going to get that many programmers?
Someone here wondered a few days ago how an Internet worm might succeed if it were able to mutate and evolve in a Darwinian context. This writer is wondering what software will be like when all code can evolve, and interact, and what that emergent behavior might be like.
.NET will become a monoculture on the internet -- it would be quite a surprise to suddenly find little XML packets flying around in a language nobody could understand, the fruit of some bright hacker who releases a clever little self replicator, evolving at five generations an hour.
It is both a wonderful and frightening thought -- the Internet may already be sufficiently complex for self-replicating, self-modifying code to survive in the wild - and if it isn't, it won't be too long before that becomes possible.
We are all busy wondering if Microsoft and
How long would it take for Darwinian code to evolve to the point where we couldn't eradicate it?
I think the biological model is worth paying attention to. A plague wipes out cathedral builders and bazaar merchants alike.
A customer service representative will be with me shortly.
Because absolutely *everyone* here has either:
1) thought of the obvious Mafia jokes, or
2) bitched about how obvious the Mafia joke is and how it shouldn't be considered funny,
allow me, while ostensibly making a 'mob' joke, to bring a new and fresh topic of conversation to the table:
Who would win in a fight?
a) Don Corleone (young or old; your choice)
b) Don Juan
c) Don Quixote
d) Don Ho
e) Don Adams
f) Don Diego de la Vega
g) Don Knotts
h) Don Pablo
i) Donatello (artist)
j) Donatello (ninja turtle)
k) Don CowboyNeal
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
I have a day job. I also work on Free software, and other things related to open sytems (e.g. standards for things, not "Open Source").
I also have plural shiny things. This is because my achievements _outside_ may day job have two effects:
- I gain useful skills that eventually get used in my day job. I become the foobar guru.
- I can point to my achievements outside the day job and say "look! See, I am of consequence elsewhere; I understand the industry well, have a little influence in it, and another employer would jump at the chance to employ me".
Actually, the problem is, no time to play with the shiny things because I'm too busy hacking interesting code. Interesting code is a real breath of fresh air because you do it when you want to, and not today if you don't feel like it.Isn't this basically just the standard Open-Source development model, but restated with a lot more cool poetry?
Perhaps that's not "Mob Software's" point -- perhaps the whole point is just a romanticization of The Bazaar. I'm cool with that.
All the "attempting to be funny" posts. Look at yourselves people! you have NO lives!