As human beings we tend to think rather highly of ourselves – software architects even more so! However, scientific discoveries from the last 150 years have revealed how our species is merely a bit-player in the grand, ongoing experiment in self-organisation that we call "Nature". This talk highlights some of the more significant ideas that have emerged from the discipline of software engineering over the last six decades, and examines how Mother Nature is usually one step ahead of us by a few hundred million years or so. It also invites us to imagine where natural paradigms might guide us in the future, if we are willing to listen.

1. Software Architecture:
Lessons from Nature
Riccardo M Bennett-Lovsey
Founder – Zametek.com

15. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfYf_rPWUdY

16. Source: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020

18. “The definition of evolutionary architecture that
we state here includes two critical characteristics:
incremental and guided.”
– Building Evolutionary Architectures

21. Change is inevitable
(but never free)

23. Nature abhors a vacuum
(no niche remains empty for very long)

25. Stress begets innovation
(be a Raccoon, not a Panda)

27. Some mistakes can never be fixed
(live with it!)

31. Source: https://www.app.pan.pl/archive/published/app57/app20110019.pdf

32. Volatility is a feature, not a bug!
(find the sweet-spot between order and chaos)

33. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI8yKN-WoUs

34. Encapsulation

35. Modularity

36. Data Contract/API

37. Exceptions

38. Layered
Architectures

39. Inheritance
& Polymorphism

40. Engines Orchestrators
Factories

43. A B
A B
A B

44. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37667-4
N = nodes
K = average inputs
P = bias function

45. • Ordered
• Fixed pattern of behaviour
• Chaotic
• Random patterns of behaviour
• Critical
• Thin line between Order and Chaos
• Exhibit spontaneous order
• Multiple stable patterns of behaviour (Attractors)
• 𝐴𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑠 ≈ 𝑁

46. Order Chaos
We should be here

47. Source: https://twitter.com/phennex/status/1296052325266657281

49. Sustainable Criticality
• Live projects need to achieve and maintain a state of Criticality
• Change must be as easy as possible, but no easier
• View the ability to accommodate change as an investment
• Prepare your architecture for a graceful death
• Architect:
• Part Engineer
• Part Gardener
• Part Medic
• Part Raccoon
• Not a Panda

50. Recommended Reading
• Biomimicry Institute
• https://biomimicry.org/
• “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature”
• Janine Benyus
• “Residuality Theory, random simulation, and attractor networks”
• Barry O’Reilly, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 201 (2022), pages 639-645
• “The Edge of Organization: Chaos and Complexity Theories of Formal Social Systems”
• Russ Marion