Can "Page's Law" Be Broken?

theodp writes "Speaking at the Google I/O Developer Conference, Sergey Brin described Google's efforts to defeat "Page's Law," the tendency of software to get twice as slow every 18 months. 'Fortunately, the hardware folks offset that,' Brin joked. 'We would like to break Page's Law and have our software become increasingly fast on the same hardware.' Page, of course, refers to Google co-founder Larry Page, last seen delivering a nice from-the-heart commencement address at Michigan that's worth a watch (or read)."

Comments

Re:I don't think that holds up

[Keith_Beef]

All he has done is put numbers into Wirth's law.

I remembered this as "software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster", but Wikipedia has a slightly different wording: "software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

In fact, that article also cites a version called "Gates's Law", including the 50% reduction in speed every 18 months.

K.