Debian: contempt for "end user" values has to stop!"

[Amedee @ Ubuntu]

On Thu, August 20, 2009 15:02, Derek Broughton wrote:

> Linux is evolutionary.  Evolution _is_ a bunch of "second-rate coders
> patching up every little personal gripe."
>
> A local church had a sign out front that said "If evolution were real,
> mothers would come with three arms".  I claim that, if anything, that was
> proof of evolution, because clearly, once again, evolution got it wrong.
> God would have got it right.
>
> Just like evolution, code (often bad) gets added, pruned and modified all
> the time.  The end result improves, but the methods of getting there are
> seldom optimal.


Ouch.
Being trained as a biology teacher (but not working in education), this
really hurt my eyes. What you are describing, is at best Lamarckism.
Darwinian evolution is a completely different beast.


By the way, I'm currently half way trough a facsimile of the 1859 edition
of "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" by Charles Robert
Darwin. I bought that book in the shop of the Natural History Museum in
London after visiting the "Darwin - Big Idea" exhibition.

-- 
Amedee