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LIMITS OF HUMAN SMARTS. -- "it is the fundamental tenet of science that nothing is impossible to understand."" "-- "That's nonsense. It's a fervent hope that nothing is impossible to understand, we have no choice but to operate as if this were true, but it's a fact that human intelligence has finite limits. I'm a computer scientist: those limits are a gating factor in this industry." https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3d3vct View in LinkedIn

THE GIST. "There is a difference between 100 million lines of code that no one person understands... and 10 lines of code no one can understand." https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3d3vct View in LinkedIn

HUGE AND MESSY. "Poorly defined criteria are already the bane of any programmer's existence. Does anyone in the world, outside of a few aerospace projects, have a 100% consistent and unambiguous specification to work from? A Boeing 787 has around 10 million lines of code. A modern car, around 100 million. Do you think anyone at Ford understand all 100 million lines? Do you think they have complete specifications for all that code?" https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3d3vct View in LinkedIn

JERRY RIGGED CODE. "Under the hood, most critical software you use every day (like Mac OS X, or Facebook) contains a terrifying number of hacks and shortcuts that happen to barely fit together into a working whole. It would be like taking apart a brand-new 747 and discovering that the fuel line is held in place by a coat-hanger and the landing gear is attached with duct tape.”  (Ben Cherry). https://lnkd.in/dKSjpup View in LinkedIn

LIMITS OF HUMAN COMPREHENSION. "Does anyone still really believe that all computer systems they use today are perfectly comprehensible to the humans who work on them?" https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3d3vct View in LinkedIn

PERFECT FITNESS. "We speak of the perfection of nature but also, and even more frequently, of that of human productions, which we customarily call perfect when they are entirely in accord with the purpose for which they were produced." https://lnkd.in/dGdFrHS View in LinkedIn

PREVAILING VIEW. "On the uniformity and perfection of nature." (Philip Freneau,1815). https://lnkd.in/dKQSbZr View in LinkedIn

SELECTION OF THE PERFECT. "On the other hand, very many enzymes appear not to be involved in metabolic control...and for these we can ask to what extent the selective pressures of evolution have produced the perfect catalyst....In this Account we shall suggest one measure of perfection." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar50112a001 View in LinkedIn

CONFLICTED PERFECTION. "For some enzymes, there is going to be a conflict between changes that maximize catalytic effectiveness and changes that optimize control, and for these enzymes we may expect that some catalytic power has been sacrificed to the higher good of metabolic control." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar50112a001 View in LinkedIn

ENZYME PERFECTION. "Perfection in enzyme catalysis. During the last 10(9) years the structures of biological macromolecules have been refined and improved so as to optimize the functioning of the organisms that use them." (1976). https://lnkd.in/dv8GHqY View in LinkedIn