This book influenced me tremendously. It explains how can random process (e.g. genetic mutation) builds highly non-random structures (e.g. the human eye). Recently I was using American Fuzzy Lop (http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/) to find bugs in my software, and was able to appreciate the surprising effectiveness of the "random" strategy it employs to discover structures in the program. For example, AFL could construct a valid JPEG using randomized input: https://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-th....
Hey thanks for the link, that jpeg example is really quite cool.
One of the things that I gained from the book was a bit better "feel" for getting the right granularity/modularity in order to facilitate evolvability (as in the chunks I might want to swap out for another implementation, while leaving others in place), as a separate concern from maintainability.
BTW, I've noticed is that the "order blindly emerging from chaos" theme keeps popping up in fiction by writers like Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, and Charles Stross (all favorites of mine).
