Grauw’s blog

» Raganwald: Spaghetti-Western Coding

I think I kind of understand DNA now. It’s like machine code that generates machine code which generates machine code. With tons of optimisations of the worst readable kind, self-modifying code all over the place. And written in brainfuck. I pity the biologists who have to make sense of that :).

But no wonder we’re so fragile! Seems like our genetic code, although incrementally built and tested over millions of years, is the worst spaghetti-code you can imagine. It works, but a little mutation or some unexpected input from a virus, and it falls apart.

Although if Reginald Braithwaite is to be believed, there is hope for structuring metaprogramming languages just like OOP structures imperative languages. Well, once we’ve figured out those structural primitives, maybe instead of patching up the existing code, we should start refactoring :). Sounds like that’s a good way to get our systems to work more reliable. Though it’ll take some time to get the same kind of test coverage.