Wirth's law is an adage on

computer performance In computing, computer performance is the amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system. Outside of specific contexts, computer performance is estimated in terms of accuracy, efficiency and speed of executing computer program instructio ...

which states that

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster. The adage is named after

Niklaus Wirth Niklaus Emil Wirth (born 15 February 1934) is a Swiss computer scientist. He has designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Turing Award, generally ...

, a computer scientist who discussed it in his 1995 article "A Plea for Lean Software".

History

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." Other observers had noted this for some time before; indeed, the trend was becoming obvious as early as 1987. He states two contributing factors to the acceptance of ever-growing software as: "rapidly growing hardware performance" and "customers' ignorance of features that are essential versus nice-to-have". Enhanced user convenience and functionality supposedly justify the increased size of software, but Wirth argues that people are increasingly misinterpreting complexity as sophistication, that "these details are cute but not essential, and they have a hidden cost". As a result, he calls for the creation of "leaner" software and pioneered the development of

Oberon Oberon () is a king of the fairies in medieval and Renaissance literature. He is best known as a character in William Shakespeare's play ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', in which he is King of the Fairies and spouse of Titania, Queen of the Fairi ...

, a software system developed between 1986 and 1989 based on nothing but hardware. Its primary goal was to show that software can be developed with a fraction of the memory capacity and processor power usually required, without sacrificing flexibility, functionality, or user convenience.

Other names

The law was restated in 2009 and attributed to

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unti ...

, founder of

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. It has been referred to as ''Page's law''. The first use of that name is attributed to

Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was th ...

at the 2009

Google I/O Google I/O (or simply I/O) is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. "I/O" stands for Input/Output, as well as the slogan "Innovation in the Open". The event's format is similar to Google Developer Day. Hi ...

Conference. Other common forms use the names of the leading hardware and software companies of the 1990s,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

, or their CEOs,

Andy Grove Andrew Stephen Grove (born András István Gróf; 2 September 193621 March 2016) was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who served as the third CEO of Intel Corporation. He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 ...

and

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

, for example "What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away" and Andy and Bill's law: "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away". ''Gates's law'' ("The speed of software halves every 18 months"Gates' law
from the Jargon Lexicon, in the Jargon File (version 4.4.7).) is an anonymously-coined variant on Wirth's law, its name referencing

, co-founder of

. It is an 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:

feature creep Feature creep is the excessive ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product, especially in computer software, video games and consumer and business electronics. These extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and ...

, code cruft, developer laziness, lack of funding, forced updates, forced porting (to a newer OS or to support a new technology) or a management turnover whose design philosophy does not coincide with the previous manager. ''May's law'', named after David May, is a variant stating: "Software efficiency halves every 18 months, compensating Moore's law".

History

Other names

See also

References

Further reading