Evolution is the way to avoid getting bogged down in engineering, but engineering is the way to ensure that the thing you build really does what it is supposed to do. Engineering is slow, but spinning way out of control is a heck of a lot slower. Evolution is obviously more dynamic, but it is also more chaotic, and you have to continually accept that you’ve gone down a bad path and need to backtrack. That is hard to admit sometimes. For most systems, there are parts that really need to be engineered, and parts that can just be allowed to evolve. The more random the evolutionary path, the more stuff you need to throw away and redo. Wobbling is always expensive. Nature gets away with this by having millions of species, but we really only have one development project, so it isn’t particularly convenient.
Quote Citation: Programers paradox, “The Programmer’s Paradox: Systems Thinking”, Thursday, February 5, 2026, https://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.com/2026/02/systems-thinking.html