Why Is Software So Slow?

The title of this post is the title of an article in September 2013 The Atlantic.

Hardware generally meets its potential, providing faster processing and more space in more and more confined areas.  Software, Charles Simonyi claims in an interview with James Fallows, has a way to go before it similarly meets its potential, that new or better-leveraged coding paradigms must be discovered and used to speed-up everything and to remove all the repetitive tasks we still are required to complete that computers are so well suited to address.

Read the article for all of its salient points.  All I want to say is that it’s all accurate, regarding the way things are and the way things have been from the beginning of computer programming.  We have yet to harness software's potential to be our amazingly talented and intuitive administrative assistant.

I was particularly impressed with what I thought was Simonyi's key observation, simply stated:  We can do things like send email “because the knowledge of how to do it has been encoded in software.”  This is how all software is applied, really.  But if you consider anything you do repetitively at a computer, aren't tasks left which could be “encoded in software”?  Of course there are.

Software features are often derisively referred to as “bells and whistles,” but some can be actually time saving.  Most of us likely don't use the shortcuts available to us, don’t leverage software within MS Office, for example, which eliminates repetitive tasks.  "Slow software" is a human problem also. We often don’t bother to use features because there’s a certain ramp-up learning period that initially lengthens the time it takes to complete something.  But anything we find ourselves doing over and over again we should investigate to see if there’s a feature that would speed the process.

For example, I don’t think most of us use macros enough.  They are available in many programs, the ability to “record” successive keystrokes as a one-click event to avoid typing so much.  Also, the notion of templates is a favorite of mine, that for anything you've ever done there may be a model for it that could be tweaked rather than starting all over again from scratch.

In the article cited, Simonyi complains about TV controllers and similar “remotes.”  It’s certainly imaginable that any of them might record macros to allow one-button pushes to guide a user down a well-worn path.  This is what “Guide” and “Menu” buttons do, but why not something more personalized?  If I always want to see the HBO documentaries, I ought to be able to get there in one click.

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