Yes. Code that is "commented out" is still left in for documentation and to provide a fall-back should conditions change which require going back to a previous method. I suspect that the same thing is going on in the genome, where evolution plays with alternatives, but keeps the older deprecated and disabled versions around (either in this particular individual, or in the pool of genes in the entire population) as fall-backs. At 03:29 PM 5/12/2016, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 5/12/2016 11:44 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
We've been running this evolutionary experiment with Unix/Linux/OpenWRT/... for the past 50 years, and the outcome is clear: it is nearly impossible to come up with a mechanism that enforces small DNA/RNA/kernel size.
Or to flip this around, the marginal cost of adding additional "functionality" -- especially functionality that is executed only occasionally (i.e., small *dynamic* cost) -- is almost free.
Which also means that non-functional code is also almost free and may persist indefinitely. And some code may even go from non-functional to functional and vice versa, depending on mutations.