software is getting fatter just because food are there

Table of Contents

Generally, software is getting bigger and slower just because they can, due to the advance of hardware development, without any substantial improvement in functionality and performance of any kind.

Similar points are hold against Microsoft Windows, claiming it is just getting slower and slower and requiring better and better hardware forming a Micrsoft-Intel loop. Wirth [1] also wrote an article addressing the problem, and claiming “if a system cannot be fully understood by a single person to a substantial level of details, it probably should never be built”.

1. link

Bibliography

[1]
N. Wirth, “A plea for lean software,” Computer, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 64–68, Feb. 1995, doi: 10.1109/2.348001.

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speed of program

Execution time of program is an important metric of program(and programming language), both in CPU cycles and real time.

  • In general, there is a trend of hardware is getting faster, which twin exists another trend of slower software(in CPU cycle and memory usage, not necessarily feel slower), which have raised 2 opinions:

hardware is getting faster

It is a fact that the advance in semiconductor technology has pushed computer hardwares to be thousands times faster than it used to be.

With respect to this fact, 2 kinds of opinions are raised:

Author: Linfeng He

Created: 2024-04-03 Wed 23:23