I was reading the other day when I was visited by a caterpillar. He was probably the size of a 0.7mm pencil lead. Immediately distracted, I was taken away from reading and drawn to his movements.

A caterpillar is made of of a series of segments and devices each with the sole purpose of processing food. I got tuned into that sole focus as he moved across my arm. A few moves then up to have a look around for food, a few moves then up looking for food again and so on…

(This is where I am not going to draw a parallel to a caterpillars focus and some software or language idiom. )

Here is what I saw…

When the caterpillar approached something natural, such as my arm, a leaf, some grass - it move like silk, without interruption. When it approached something unnatural, such as my watch, it struggled with navigation and movement.

Much like the software we write and design we loose traction when something ”unnatural” enters our systems. Being cautious of aberrant things being introduced into our ecosystem is a fundamental desire of an architect. Without this awareness our systems begin to slow and stop functioning.

Consider the caterpillar - if you run into something that slows you or your system remove / re-factor.