TITLE: Same Footage, Different Film
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 22, 2018  3:50 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 In <EM>In the Blink of an Eye</EM>, Walter Murch tells
 the story of human and chimpanzee DNA, about how the DNA
 itself is substantially the same and how the sequencing,
 which we understand less well, creates different beings
 during the development of the newborn.  He concludes by
 bringing the analogy back to film editing:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 My point is that the information in the DNA can be seen as uncut
 film and the mysterious sequencing as the editor.  You could sit
 in one room with a pile of dailies and another editor could sit
 in the next room with exactly the same footage and both of you
 could make different films out of the same material.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

 This struck me as quite the opposite of what programmers do.
 When given a new problem and a large language in which to
 solve it, two programmers can choose substantially different
 source material and yet end up telling the same story.
 Functional and OO programmers, say, may decompose the problem
 in a different way and rely on different language features to
 build their solutions, but in the end both programs will solve
 the same problem and meet the same user need.  Like the chimp
 and the human, though, the resulting programs may be better
 adapted for living in different environments.
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