Wirth's law is a computing adage made popular by Niklaus Wirth in 1995:[1]
| “ | Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.[2] | ” |
Wirth attributed the saying to Martin Reiser, who, in the preface to his book on the Oberon System, wrote: The hope is that the progress in hardware will cure all software ills. However, a critical observer may observe that software manages to outgrow hardware in size and sluggishness.[3](Other observers had noted this for some time before, indeed the trend was becoming obvious as early as 1987.[4])
Computer hardware has become faster over time, and some of that development is quantified by Moore's law; Wirth's law points out that this does not imply that work is actually getting done faster.
The law was restated in 2009 and attributed to Larry Page, founder of Google. It is frequently referred to as Page's Law.[5] The first use of that name is attributed to Sergey Brin at Google I/O Conference 2009.[6]
Contents |
| “ | The speed of software halves every 18 months.[7] | ” |
Gates' Law is a variant on Wirth's Law, borrowing its name from Bill Gates[7], the founder of Microsoft. It is a humorous and ironic observation that the speed of commercial software generally slows by 50% every 18 months, thereby negating all the benefits of Moore's Law. This could occur for a variety of reasons: "featuritis", "code cruft", programmer laziness, or a management turnover whose design philosophy does not coincide with the previous manager.[8]