Gates' Law
Gates' Law is a humorous and ironic observation that the speed of commercial software GeneRally slows by fifty percent every 18 months. 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.
Gates' Law is born of the frustration that many users feel due to the apparent tendency of commercial software to become slower with each successive incremental version, such that buying new hardware upgrades sounds like a reasonable idea.
The "law" is inversely related to Moore's Law, which predicts that the speed of microprocessors will double every 24 months. Gates' law is thus meant to be an ironic counterpoint to Moore's law, explaining the apparent fact that despite hardware advances, the responsiveness of software does not improve. This law is a variant of Wirth's law that states that "Software is decelerating faster than hardware is accelerating.".
Though the law's name refers to Bill Gates, Gates did not formulate or express it. Rather, the name refers to a perceived tendency of Microsoft products to slow down with each new feature or patch.
See also
- Moore's Law
- Wirth's Law
References
pl:Prawo Gatesa