Self-organized criticality in code repositories
@jjmerelo | @geneura | @canalUGR
Software development is complicated
And complex, too
The world is complex
It all started with literature
Can text in books self-organize?
WHERE self-organizing IS they tune themselves
Does it reach a critical state?
WHERE critical IS changes can cause any effect
It will if
they are scale-invariant
WHERE scale-invariant IS no average scale
There are long-distance correlations
WHERE long-distance IS exactly that.
... and there is pink noise
WHERE pink noise IS ...
too complicated for a single slide
Do we have self organized criticality in
books?
Self-organized criticality in fiction: the case of #Slash, a novel
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15292.03202/1
π
π
Self-organization β¬ observation
Finding the right level is key
Software developers
self-organize
(How|What|Who)
* self-organization
What/why is critical
Who does self-organize?
Maybe not the right question
Looking at the file level
And another: lines written
Code self-organizes.
How do you organize self-organization?
You can't
Gershenson: increase satisfaction
Repositories self-organize β
critical state
This is caused by the nature of writing
stuff
Understanding this might help us improve free
software productivity and sustainability
As well as city,
company, artistic sustainability.
γ©γγγγγγ¨γ
θ³ͺεγ§γγοΌ
Thank you. Questions?
Picture credits
![Sandpile cellular automata By Claudio Rocchini (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Backtang2.png){kind=link}