Wirth’s law
E168966
Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
All labels observed (3)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Software Aging | 1 |
| Wirth's law | 1 |
| Wirth’s law canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1478605 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Wirth’s law Context triple: [Niklaus Wirth, notableIdea, Wirth’s law]
-
A.
Moore's law
Moore's law is an observation and prediction that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit—and thus computing power—tends to roughly double at regular intervals, driving exponential growth in digital technology.
-
B.
Cunningham's Law
Cunningham's Law is an internet adage stating that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
-
C.
Sutton's law
Sutton's law is a medical and diagnostic principle that advises focusing first on the most likely cause of a problem, echoing bank robber Willie Sutton’s apocryphal rationale for targeting banks.
-
D.
Postel’s law
Postel’s law is a design principle in computing and networking that advises systems to be conservative in what they send and liberal in what they accept, promoting robustness and interoperability.
-
E.
Software is eating the world
"Software is eating the world" is a famous thesis by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen arguing that software-driven companies are transforming and dominating nearly every traditional industry.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Wirth’s law Target entity description: Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
-
A.
Moore's law
Moore's law is an observation and prediction that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit—and thus computing power—tends to roughly double at regular intervals, driving exponential growth in digital technology.
-
B.
Cunningham's Law
Cunningham's Law is an internet adage stating that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
-
C.
Sutton's law
Sutton's law is a medical and diagnostic principle that advises focusing first on the most likely cause of a problem, echoing bank robber Willie Sutton’s apocryphal rationale for targeting banks.
-
D.
Postel’s law
Postel’s law is a design principle in computing and networking that advises systems to be conservative in what they send and liberal in what they accept, promoting robustness and interoperability.
-
E.
Software is eating the world
"Software is eating the world" is a famous thesis by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen arguing that software-driven companies are transforming and dominating nearly every traditional industry.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (45)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
informal empirical observation
ⓘ
software engineering aphorism ⓘ |
| appliesTo |
desktop applications
ⓘ
enterprise software ⓘ general-purpose software ⓘ operating systems ⓘ web applications ⓘ |
| cause |
feature creep
ⓘ
higher-level languages and frameworks used without attention to performance ⓘ increasing software complexity ⓘ inefficient abstractions ⓘ poorly optimized code ⓘ |
| concerns |
execution speed of software
ⓘ
growth of resource consumption in software ⓘ impact of software design on performance ⓘ |
| consequence |
higher hardware requirements for new software versions
ⓘ
increased energy consumption by software ⓘ reduced efficiency of computing resources ⓘ shorter useful life of hardware ⓘ |
| contrastsWith | optimistic interpretations of Moore’s law ⓘ |
| coreIdea | software becomes slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster ⓘ |
| describes |
relationship between software speed and hardware speed
ⓘ
software performance degradation over time ⓘ |
| field |
computer science
ⓘ
software engineering ⓘ |
| focusesOn |
long-term trends in software performance
ⓘ
trade-off between features and efficiency ⓘ |
| hasPerspective | pessimistic view of net performance gains from hardware advances ⓘ |
| implies |
hardware performance improvements can be negated by software bloat
ⓘ
user-perceived performance may not improve despite faster hardware ⓘ |
| influences |
discussions on sustainable computing
ⓘ
minimalist software movements ⓘ software performance best practices ⓘ |
| namedAfter | Niklaus Wirth ⓘ |
| relatedTo |
Amdahl's law
ⓘ
surface form:
Amdahl’s law
Moore's law ⓘ
surface form:
Moore’s law
Parkinson’s law of triviality ⓘ performance optimization ⓘ software bloat ⓘ software efficiency ⓘ |
| status | heuristic rather than strict physical law ⓘ |
| timePeriod | late 20th century formulation ⓘ |
| usedAs |
argument for lean software design
ⓘ
argument for performance-aware programming ⓘ critique of software bloat ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Wirth’s law Description of subject: Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
Referenced by (3)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
Wirth's law
this entity surface form:
Software Aging