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Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

Even if you replace every board in the ship, it's still constrained by its original design. These software systems could be similar in that even if every line of code were replaced, architectural patterns, file formats, etc. that were created for the original system will continue to influence the current design.

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Or ribosomes in every living thing translates mRNA into protein. Over three billion years of generic evolution the ribosome amino acids differ considerably between far apart species, yet retain their function.

Before DNA sequencing became efficient, a particular protein inside the ribosome was used to study genetic divergence.

>Even if you replace every board in the ship, it's still constrained by its original design.

Is it though? Or are you assuming it has to be replaced life-for-like? If so, why don't we apply the same to software? I don't think that constraint is a given with hardware. Is a remodeled house constrained by it's original design? It seems to come down to how much you want to invest in "refactoring" the old house.

Your comment made me think of the evolution of the F/A-18. The new variants are utterly different than their original, yet are still technically the same airframe.

one word: 737MAX

Care to elaborate? I’m pretty familiar with the issue, but not sure what through line you’re making

> The new variants are utterly different than their original, yet are still technically the same airframe.

This is what Boeing had in the 737MAX. It was a different aircraft, but it looked like the 737-800.

The MAX was under an amended type certification, so they were acknowledging the changes. Boeing didn’t follow their own rules regarding safety design (like redundancy on critical items identified on their hazard analysis)

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