[osharav]

Fair enough, although I think that discussing and further thinking about that analogy might be able to create new insights. I find it unfortunate that in addition to highly interesting information you've shared, you have also chosen to make destructive criticism about my attempt to find touch points between software and drug development. See, software development, the way I see it, is based on sharing, via open source, but not only. The culture it induces is of being open, to new ideas and to constructive criticism.

> Drug molecules aren't meaningfully decomposed into individual units

It's not about the molecules - it's about the tests. Envision a state where you could say - "oh dear, 6 volunteers for first-in-man Phase 1 tests had to be hospitalized - let's find a lab test, or a change in the model which would predict a positive result for the structure we've tested and negative result for other structures which do not cause that condition". The individual units don't have to be the molecules, they can also be the tests. You would argue, and rightly so, that finding such a test is hard/impossible. And I would agree but the whole article is about defining the problem - and because in software development, when making a small bug fix - you are not after making the entire system work, rather a tiny fraction of it better apt for a new condition you did not take care of earlier.

> the answer is "maybe"

When uncertainty is high - wouldn't you want to strengthen the tools that allow you to know at least that the failures you've already encountered won't happen again?

I find it also unfortunate that you think my article is dismissive of efforts made by countless people before me. I had and have no such intention.

[dalke]

If you think my comments are "destructive criticism" then I invite you to post to a medchemist's site, like Derek Lowe's, or present at a medchemist's conference and see the responses you get.

By giving you all these pointers I am trying to provide the "constructive criticism" you say you want.

I am also trying to establish my bona fides, so you might have a chance of accepting as true my statement that you've offered no insights which were not already known a century ago. It's not like the concepts underlying unit testing didn't exist before CS developed them.

And I have no wish to put up with an eternal September here on HN when some enthusiastic engineer thinks the methods from that field can be moved over to drug development. It very similar to what Lowe, above, calls the 'Andy Grove fallacy' - http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/04/02/sil... .

Also, there's an entire field for the theory of the design of experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_experiments . These are used in drug development. Perhaps it's software development which should incorporate ideas drug development, and not the other way around.

[osharav]

I am not saying that Computer Engineering (not science) can magically overcome the challenges of drug development - that would indeed be fallacy. I am saying that one of the challenges in software development is to maintain progress in an ever changing world of modifications done to the product. I see similar challenges in the drug development field - And so I try to find the link between what has worked in software development to what exists in the drug development area. You say that due to the complexity of drug development and the huge difference between the two fields all I can say is that in both worlds we conduct experiments and in the drug development area you have a far better understanding of how to conduct these experiments effectively.

You know better than me. You're right, I can offer no new insights, only the knowledge gained from experience (not necessarily theory). And from my experience what makes a product work is not the algorithms used, or the number of people working on it, or the technology used - it is how its progress is maintained via automated/constant testing.

If you think that the resources spent on maintaining progress in the drug development world are suitable - that's good to know.

[dalke]

Quoting from that Derek Lowe link to http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/04/02/sil... since it seems to describe your situation almost perfectly:

> There’s another problem that’s not unique to [Silicon] Valley, although it does tend to give people a bad case of it. That’s the “Clearly I’m smart and successful, so clearly I have something to offer in this other field over here” one. We all succumb to that one now and then; it’s human nature. ... If you’re used to being able to sit down and bang out code, any time, anywhere, with all kinds of tools (libraries, compilers, virtual machines, what have you) at your fingertips, then yeah, working up a new assay protocol in a cell line is going to seem agonizingly slow. Multibillion dollar ideas can be cranked out in the coding world very quickly, if you hit the right place at the right time, but just you try that in the lab. ... The real bottlenecks are figuring out what assay to run, and what to do with the data once you have it. ...

> As much as I might like to see something like that happening in biopharma, though, I can’t quite make myself believe it. Technology, Silicon Valley style technology, is human-designed and human-optimized for other humans. As human beings, we’re playing on our home turf there. But the biology of disease is an away game if there ever was one. The inner workings of cells and the ways that they work together are flat-out alien compared to anything we’ve ever built ourselves. People who are used to coding up apps have never experienced anything like it, and many of them don’t seem to realize that they haven’t. Expecting the sorts of behavior that you get from human-built technologies, and expecting the same effects from the techniques that work to optimize them, is an expensive accident waiting to happen.

As a related example, in the early 1990s AutoCAD thought they could enter molecular modelling, since they figured they could leverage what they knew from designing structures to design molecules. https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_82.html . You'll notice the lack of success, and HyperChem is a dead product.

[osharav]

I can't really see how the quote from Lowe's article is a reply to what I've written. I've done my best to be as humble as I can while still trying to offer something from my experience. You seem to be fixed on an image. You may call it silicon valley way of thinking or Andy Grove fallacy. It is unfortunate that it prevented you from replying to what I've written and instead caused you to paste in what is probably your auto response for any kind of an outside look on your field.

I sure hope you know what you're doing.

[dalke]

The uniformly negative comments by others here suggests that it is not uniquely I who misunderstand you.

[osharav]

The uniformity of comments here worries me, as does Lowe's article.

I think you are building a very tall wall.

The gist of my article is: From my experience in my area, developing in a complex environment requires the most investment not in the speed of processing, not in the algorithms used, not in the amount of memory - but mainly in ensuring constant progress. I was deeply curious to learn what is the equivalent in the drug development field.

Yes the theory existed long before Computer Science and Engineering ever did - but the experience did not.

> “Clearly I’m smart and successful, so clearly I have something to offer in this other field over here”

Interestingly enough, I did not speak of my successes, or my reputation, or other people who could say how great I am or even my current role. No, you did that.

> You'll notice the lack of success, and HyperChem is a dead product.

How ironic that you've stated one fallacy (success in one field -> success in another) and then immediately used a similar one.

> letting the submitter (that is, you), know that it is a poor fit for HN. > Why is this linked-to from HN?

I don't need to post anywhere to know that this is destructive criticism.

Perhaps the ideas in my article are completely wrong - I can live with that. What worries me more is the culture which exists in your field, the notion that you can dismiss so easily an outsider's look into your field instead of trying to see exactly how it relates to it, why you think that the idea is already implemented or should not be implemented and instead - spend so much energy on trying to convince me that I should never even think about proposing anything to any other field except my own.

Us and them - I think this saddens me most - I'm them, you're us (and vice versa from my POV).