What Breaks a Cell's Ribs Can Make It Stronger

What Breaks a Cell's Ribs Can Make It Stronger(quantamagazine.org)

9 points by jnord 2 days ago | 3 comments

Biology seems to do this surprisingly often—systems become more resilient because they have to respond to stress, not despite it. The interesting part is figuring out where that line is.

taeric 21 minutes ago | |

Everything that grows does this, to an extent? Consider software that gets more development effort. If it is getting more updates, it is likely getting "stronger" than that which is not getting updates.

Now, you can also argue that software is likely to get vulnerabilities if it grows too fast. But, that is also true for living things. Trees that grow too fast for their roots fall. Animal populations that grow too heavily will destroy their food sources and become more vulnerable to plenty of problems.

vitally3643 2 minutes ago | | |

Software updates are better modeled as an immune or stress response. When made in response to a stimulus (bug, feature request, security fix), yes, the system grows stronger. When software updates eight times a week, that's pathological auto-immune behavior. The system is cannibalizing itself in response to imaginary stimulus.

BariumBlue 12 minutes ago | | |

Honestly software that gets a bunch of updates often gets more brittle and problematic over time, like how a person accumulates illnesses over time.

Though I guess a software project or software team usually does get stronger over time, as they figure out pipelines, devops, systems and rituals that work well for them.