On Feedback Infrastructure - In Code
The other day - I was nursing some inflamed tendons in my left knee. The result of a 1000 mile drive from Boca Raton to Alexandria VA - and an immobile left foot for hours!
As I was waiting for the doctor, I was studying the colorful diagrams of muscles and tendons and bones and their connections. Of course the nerves that actuate the systems are not shown in the charts.
As the doctor started his diagnostic process and pressed down on the knee and pain shot through it - it got me thinking and marveling about the nerve sensors and 'inbuilt' feedback infrastructure that nature builds into animal bodies - to protect it from damage.
I could not help myself contrasting it with our code writing as we build systems. We don't always put 'diagnostic' sensors everywhere as we go along(laziness?). But nature does not forget to do that. It unfailingly builds feedback sensors into all the muscles. I wonder why. Does it have an evolutionary benefit? Would it not be beneficial - for a lion not to feel any pain in its legs (if hurt) - so it could continue to wander around pain free and hunt?
But once nature finds a pattern (in this case an inbuilt actuator-sensor feedback 'fabric' embedded into the muscles)- it repeats it unfailingly.
Perhaps that is what we should also do in all the systems we build as well. What we need of course is a less labor intensive way to repeat patterns . Any thoughts?
As I was waiting for the doctor, I was studying the colorful diagrams of muscles and tendons and bones and their connections. Of course the nerves that actuate the systems are not shown in the charts.
As the doctor started his diagnostic process and pressed down on the knee and pain shot through it - it got me thinking and marveling about the nerve sensors and 'inbuilt' feedback infrastructure that nature builds into animal bodies - to protect it from damage.
I could not help myself contrasting it with our code writing as we build systems. We don't always put 'diagnostic' sensors everywhere as we go along(laziness?). But nature does not forget to do that. It unfailingly builds feedback sensors into all the muscles. I wonder why. Does it have an evolutionary benefit? Would it not be beneficial - for a lion not to feel any pain in its legs (if hurt) - so it could continue to wander around pain free and hunt?
But once nature finds a pattern (in this case an inbuilt actuator-sensor feedback 'fabric' embedded into the muscles)- it repeats it unfailingly.
Perhaps that is what we should also do in all the systems we build as well. What we need of course is a less labor intensive way to repeat patterns . Any thoughts?
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