The programming talent myth
The programming talent myth
Posted May 1, 2015 11:53 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)In reply to: The programming talent myth by neilbrown
Parent article: The programming talent myth
Neil, you have to be careful about distinguishing between the origin of new traits and the survival of those traits in a species.
As you correctly state, new traits are produced completely at random. However, unless those traits improve the survival chances of the individuals and improve their reproductive success, they are unlikely to persist to subsequent generations; instead they'll be swamped out my further random fluctuations.
I do not see how the ability to program computers increased our ancestors' survival or reproduction chances. So I can only conclude that the ability to program computers developed as a side-effect of some other trait that did confer an advantage.
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