Criticism of The Current State of Programming
- David May FRS a British computer scientist and currently Professor of Computer Science at University of Bristol and founder and CTO of XMOS Semiconductor, believes one of the problems is that there is a reliance on Moore's law to solve inefficiencies. He has advanced an 'alternative' to Moore's law (May's law) stated as follows:
Software efficiency halves every 18 months, compensating Moore's Law
He goes on to stateIn ubiquitous systems, halving the instructions executed can double the battery life and big data sets bring big opportunities for better software and algorithms: Reducing the number of operations from N x N to N x log(N) has a dramatic effect when N is large... for N = 30 billion, this change is as good as 50 years of technology improvements
- Software author Adam N. Rosenburg in his blog "The failure of the Digital computer", has described the current state of programming as nearing the "Software event horizon", (alluding to the fictitious "shoe event horizon" described by Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book). He estimates there has been a 70 dB factor loss of productivity or "99.99999 percent, of its ability to deliver the goods", since the 1980s—"When Arthur C. Clarke compared the reality of computing in 2001 to the computer HAL in his book 2001: A Space Odyssey, he pointed out how wonderfully small and powerful computers were but how disappointing computer programming had become".
- Conrad Weisert gives examples, some of which were published in ACM SIGPLAN (Special Interest Group on Programming Languages) Notices, December 1995 in: "Atrocious Programming Thrives"
- Marc Andreessen co-founder of Netscape is quoted in "Mavericks at Work" (ISBN 0060779616) as saying "Five great programmers can completely outperform 1,000 mediocre programmers."
Read more about this topic: Algorithmic Efficiency
Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism, current, state and/or programming:
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“We hear the haunting presentiment of a dutiful middle age in the current reluctance of young people to select any option except the one they feel will impinge upon them the least.”
—Gail Sheehy (b. 1937)
“To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery—even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness—is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)