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DLL Hell, Software Interdependencies, and Darwinian Evolution

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In our home we have six computers (distributed among me, my wife, and two daughters): two Macs, two Windows machines, and two Linux (Unix) machines. I’m the IT (Information Technology) or IS (Information Systems) guy in the household — whatever is is.

A chronic problem rears its ugly head on a regular basis when I attempt to update any of our computer systems: Software programs are often interdependent. DLLs are dynamic link libraries of executable code which are accessed by multiple programs, in order to save memory and disk space. But this interdependence can cause big problems. If the DLL is updated but the accessing program is not, all hell will break loose and the program will either severely malfunction or suffer an ignominious, catastrophic, instantaneous death. On the other hand, if the program is updated and the DLL is not, the same thing can happen.

I’m still trying to figure out how the circulatory avian lung evolved in a step-by-tiny-step fashion from the reptilian bellows lung, without encountering DLL hell, and how the hypothesized intermediates did not die of asphyxia at the moment of birth (or hatching), without the chance to reproduce.

Of course, we all know that this kind of challenge — no matter how obvious or compelling — presents no problem for the D-Fundies (Darwinian Fundamentalists), who are true believers in the clearly impossible, based on materialistic assumptions in which design could not possibly have played a role.

Comments
To be picky... DLLs are usually designed so that upgrading them should not break old programs. So, in theory, they should be able to be replaced independently of the program that are using them. Of course, in practice, either the old programs depend on bugs in the new version or the new version introduces bug not in the old version causing "all hell to break loose"WinstonEwert
June 6, 2009
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