Yuan and Natural Design

Let me be cruel, not unnatural...

—William Shakespeare

Twelve-year old William Yuan, of Beaverton, OR, has invented a 3D solar panel that  could potentially absorb hundreds of times more energy than current designs. This of course would be a great boost to the possibilities and uses of the Sun as an energy source.

 

As a software architect/developer I feel vindicated in my belief that natural processes and structures provide us with many models from which to choose. We are better off making use of such models than becoming enmeshed in convoluted algorithms — what I have come to call "unnatural designs".

This is nothing new. Some of the greatest breakthroughs in software and hardware have unabashedly borrowed from nature : Object-Oriented Software Design, the Web, LDAP, LCD technology, computer chips, etc

This should be one of these no-duh concepts that every developer grasps, yet I've had to spend way too much time just selling the concept that a natural process, progression, structure or taxonomy is the best model for solving a software problem.

This might be the result of developers being part of a generation that grew up paying lip service to nature, but not spending time in touch with it or learning about it. Seriously, how many developers appreciate the efficiency and ingenuity to be gleaned from basic natural processes like photosynthesis, the water cycle, genetics, etc.

I am not proposing that software professionals become biologists or physicists — OK, perhaps physics degree wouldn't hurt. I am simply positing that we need get out of our shells and expose ourselves to the outside world especially, that of nature so that we can draw inspiration from designs that have been working reliably for eons. That's what "learning from the best" is all about.