Software Maintenance, Intelligent Design, and Evolution

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As to sonnikke's pique over computer programmers and engineers not accepting his theology, despite their being creators and designers, it could be that the sort of "design" that they tend to
see is not some single great from-scratch design, but instead the sort of design that human designers are known to do -- piece-by-piece, with kludges and workarounds tending to accumulate
over time.

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For myself, it's that I don't see it as design at all.The line of reasoning which has led to this thread being open
started with the suggestion that simplicity, rather than
complexity, was the hallmark of design. Over time designed
objects become more simple, elegant, and efficient, and that
really good designs start that way.Computer programs were brought up, pointing out that they often
become highly complex and inter-dependent due to successive updates
and 'fixes' by a number of different authors. This process was
likened to evolution. And in the main I feel that the analogy
is quite accurate (excepting the 'author' part from my POV).In terms of ID arguments I see these observations as problmeatic,
particular for those who accept the Christain God as the designer.1) IC.There are programs which, through iterative update, include
functionality that if removed would stop the whole program
from working. BUT there is a revision history that shows
that the 'current' system was not designed that way but reached
that point via a development process.I cannot give any specific examples on IP&confidentiality grounds
(not with my current employer I will hastily add).My feeling is that this indicates that a large number of revisions
can develop features that later become essential to normal
operation.2) Design?If simplicity is the hallmark of good design, and animals are
complex then we have a situation in which, should they have actually
been designed, they were designed poorly.There are animal features (such as the human arrangement of
air and food intake) which offer a single point of failure
for two independent systems ... either one of which could
lead to the demise of the individual should they fail.This is not a necessary design as pointed out in the OP,
since cetaceans have these tracts isolated.

If I'm understanding the intent of your post, it kind
of sums up my objections to complexity being related to
design.The OS that you mention has a very weak design process,
as is often the case in software projects. Re-use,
when software components are designed for re-use, can present
some elegant solutions in rapid time scales. Re-using legacy
code requires a certain amount of shoe-horning.The complexity and interaction levels of kernels with this
revision history indicate (almost yell) that the up-front
design effort was lacking.If that wasn't the point you were making, or I have misread
your intent in some other way, I apologies.

You've hit the point of the discussion fairly well.You argue that:'The more complex a design gets, the more involved it gets, and the more obvious it becomes that intelligence is involved.'Skipping that you've already called it a design on the assumption
that you were being loose with your wording ...Some here have pointed out that the best 'designed' computer
programs are the most concise, and simple of things. While those
that have had many designers inputting over an extended time frame
(or those where commercial constraints have narrowed time-scales
so that management is unwilling to pay for up-front design
rigour) are exceedingly complex beasts.If we look at biological systems in this light, we must conclude
that there is little design effort put in (even if design is the
correct hypothesis). Biological systems are extremely complex,
show 'legacy code' that is still in place, but unused etc. etc.If God were the designer then he clearly had no commercial limits
or time constraints (he chose to do it in six days it wasn't
a work deadline with penalty clauses).This leads to the possibility that God is either a poor designer,
that (S)He is not omnipotent, or that perhaps intelligent design
is not what happened.