Adding plots to nonsense doesn't make it any less so. Evolution / population genetics is probably the most abused paradigm in science -- perhaps Quantum Mechanics is a close second. Just because something changes based on stuff around it doesn't make it evolutionary, or punctuated. "Close enough" doesn't cut it. It's like saying rings, fields, groups, modules etc. are basically the same thing... or DAGs, binary trees, no big difference.
Is it necessarily a bad thing if evolution concept can manifest outside its origin field of biology?
I'd like very much to hear someone in technology to evaluate more specific about this paper. As I understand vaguely, they dont offer their method as an explanation of evolution of programming language as is but as if. Which makes me kinda agree with your remark.
Nice to see Santafe's work shown here. They have many interesting findings in different fields. Simulation as a tool provides a way to look into complex systems. Though not perfect, perhaps the best we can have at the moment.
