"Gerstein said that this organization arises because software engineers tend to save money and time by building upon existing routines rather than starting systems from scratch."
Bull. There are two reasons why the shapes are different.
1. The bottom of the Linux graph is smaller because there are not very many primitive operations on a computer. Data is homogenous. There are 256 interchangeable values for a byte. By comparison, a bacterium has to use separate pieces of machinery to handle chemicals made up of the dozens of non-interchangeable elements that it works with. On a computer, you might use one single function for searching binary search trees all over the place in different systems, regardless of the data. In a bacterium, when code gets copied, the copy is modified. Every new application is a fork of some other application, welcome to a developer's nightmare (a good argument against ID... a designer would never duplicate so much code). Developers reuse code because they can, bacteria doesn't reuse code because it can't.
2. The top of the Linux graph is larger because computers have to do more. Computers get selected for features. Bacteria get selected for survival. The bacteria have to "just work", whereas people expect to be able to configure computers. I can plug 100 different network cards into my computer, but don't expect to plug a different flagellum into a bacterium. Maybe it's just a matter of level, if you picked a higher point in the call graph eventually you'd get to "main", no?
Bull. There are two reasons why the shapes are different.
1. The bottom of the Linux graph is smaller because there are not very many primitive operations on a computer. Data is homogenous. There are 256 interchangeable values for a byte. By comparison, a bacterium has to use separate pieces of machinery to handle chemicals made up of the dozens of non-interchangeable elements that it works with. On a computer, you might use one single function for searching binary search trees all over the place in different systems, regardless of the data. In a bacterium, when code gets copied, the copy is modified. Every new application is a fork of some other application, welcome to a developer's nightmare (a good argument against ID... a designer would never duplicate so much code). Developers reuse code because they can, bacteria doesn't reuse code because it can't.
2. The top of the Linux graph is larger because computers have to do more. Computers get selected for features. Bacteria get selected for survival. The bacteria have to "just work", whereas people expect to be able to configure computers. I can plug 100 different network cards into my computer, but don't expect to plug a different flagellum into a bacterium. Maybe it's just a matter of level, if you picked a higher point in the call graph eventually you'd get to "main", no?