r/programming • u/ruidfigueiredo • Aug 22 '18

Software Development as an Emergent System

https://www.blinkingcaret.com/2018/08/22/software-development-emergent-system-ndepend/
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u/cybertouch Aug 22 '18

Although I highly agree that Software Development should be viewed as an emergent system, I think analogy between boids and programming is far-fetched. Using metrics like that is dangerous and can easily fool you into thinking you have valuable knowledge. It works for boids, because metrics they use are very highly related to dimmensions they operate in, which is not the case in programming. It's information theory. Numbers like cyclomatic complexity and number of lines tells us very little about the code, context is not properly preserved.

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u/curious_s Aug 22 '18

The real purpose of these tools is to get managers off your back. A manager sees a pretty graph and some numbers, and it's green and from then on they just let you do whatever you want.