excuse the off-topic flame-bait, but it is an interesting perspective from
which to analyse Smalltalk's survival...
*
*
*'Survival of the Fittest' Now Applies to Computers*
*Stony Brook News (04/16/13)*

Researchers at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory
(BNL) have shown that the evolutionary theory of "survival of the fittest"
also applies to technological systems. The researchers compared the
frequency with which components "survive" in bacterial genomes and
operating systems on Linux computers. The researchers examined the
frequency of occurrence of genes in genomes of 500 bacterial species and
found significant similarity with the frequency of installation of 200,000
Linux packages on more than 2 million computers. The most frequently used
components in both the biological and computer systems are those that allow
for the most descendants, meaning that the more a component is relied upon
by others, the more likely it is to be required for full functionality of a
system. "We found that we can determine the number of crucial
components--those without which other components couldn't function--by a
simple calculation that holds true both in biological systems and computer
systems," says BNL computational biologist Sergei Maslov. For both the
bacteria and computing systems, the square root of the interdependent
components is used to determine the number of key components that are so
important that not a single other piece can be sustained without them.

http://commcgi.cc.stonybrook.edu/am2/publish/General_University_News_2/Survival_of_the_Fittest_Now_Applies_to_Computers.shtml
-- 
best,
Eliot
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