Communications of the ACM
Efficient Code to Counter Dying Moore's Law
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Moshe Y. Vardi's Editor's Letter "Moore's Law and the Sand-Heap Paradox" (May 2014) took me back to my computer engineering education in the 1970s, a period of transition from expensive to (relatively) inexpensive hardware. My classes, both theory and practice, required that I understand microcode and software execution environments well enough to avoid gross inefficiencies. If Moore's Law is indeed winding down, as Vardi said, software practitioners must focus even more than they already do on developing efficient code.
In my more than 35 years as a software professional, I have noted with dismay the bloatware phenomenon fueled by the expectation that Moore's Law would mask inefficient software. Developing resilient, secure, efficient software requires more skills, time, and money, along with a different mind-set, from what we see in the commercial software industry today.
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