Evolutionary systems for software
Modern software systems and companies are starting to resemble ecosystems more than engines, and yet we keep trying to design and manage our work like engineers. Aaron Longwell looks to nature for inspiration instead.
| Talk Title | Evolutionary systems for software |
| Speakers | Aaron Longwell (US State Dept, Afghanistan) |
| Conference | O’Reilly Open Source Software Conference |
| Conf Tag | Fueling innovative software |
| Location | Portland, Oregon |
| Date | July 15-18, 2019 |
| URL | Talk Page |
| Slides | Talk Slides |
| Video | |
Today’s most innovative teams—those who embraced microservices and then serverless—allow data and functionality to be repeated throughout their infrastructure. The inefficiency of it all. And yet these approaches work. Aaron Longwell goes beyond the ideas of iterative design and Agile and dives into the guts of modern evolutionary biology to see what software communities can learn from the natural world. You’ll learn how biological principles like the evolutionary landscape, fitness functions, and robustness apply to software and business. Aaron introduces you to degeneracy, which in biology refers to multiple different structures which can each perform the same function. In nature, biologists believe degeneracy is a key prerequisite for adaptation and innovation. In software, it’s something we have historically actively avoided (see: DRY). You’ll leave with a new appreciation for diversity, randomness, and junior developers and rethinking what it means to be an engineer or an architect.
