Wirth's law

Wirth's law in computing was made popular by Niklaus Wirth in 1995. [cite journal | url=http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3752 | journal = IEEE Spectrum | title=5 Commandments | author = Philip E. Ross] There are two versions and it is unclear which was the original form, or where the belief actually originated. According to Wirth's law:

:"Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster." Which Wirth attributed to Martin Reiser. [cite journal |title= A Plea for Lean Software |author= Niklaus Wirth |url= http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/2.348001 |accessdate= 2007-01-13 |journal= Computer |year=1995 | month=February |volume=28 |issue=2 |pages=pp. 64–68 |doi= 10.1109/2.348001]

or: "Software is decelerating faster than hardware is accelerating."Fact|date=April 2008

Computer hardware has gotten 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.

An example can be found with the transition to and emergence of 64-bit architectures and multi-core CPUs for which applications and operating systems have been attributed as being complex and financially intensive to design and providing little benefit to current "mainstream" markets.Fact|date=October 2008

ee also

* KISS principle
* Moore's Law
* Parkinson's law
* Software bloat

References

* "The School of Niklaus Wirth: The Art of Simplicity" by László Böszörményi, Jürg Gutknecht, and Gustav Pomberger (Editors), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2000, ISBN 1-55860-723-4.