A Biologist's View of Software Evolution

The term “software evolution” is generally used as an analogy for biological evolution. This paper explores that analogy in more depth, analyzing software evolution from the biologist’s point of view. I give a basic introduction to genetic algorithms, and describe two major issues that effect evolvability: local optima in the search space, and genotype to phenotype mappings. Aspects and meta-programs address both of these issues. Encapsulation can be seen as a technique for reducing epistasis, while meta-programming can be seen as an analog to morphogenesis.

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