One of my colleagues was asking me the other day "does software decay over time?". He asked me this question because I am a Computer Scientist but to be honest I didn't know how to answer this. To me the answer can be both yes and no, but to further investigate this I turned to the ACM DL. I found a very interesting paper published in 1994 at the 16th international conference on Software engineering. The author says "Programs, like people, get old", but was this convincing as being a scientists means you look for how? why? what? in which sense? and does this depend on the hardware? If you are also interested in these questions, then this paper provides an interesting discussion about the topic. Reading this paper also made me think "does accessibility software decay faster or slower over time compared to other kinds of software?"

Software aging

"Programs, like people, get old. We can't prevent aging, but we can understand its causes, take steps to limits its effects, temporarily reverse some of the damage it has caused, and prepare for the day when the software is no longer viable. A sign that the Software Engineering profession has matured will be that we lose our preoccupation with the first release and focus on the long term health of our products. Researchers and practitioners must change their perception of the problems of software development. Only then will Software Engineering deserve to be called Engineering."

Full Paper: Software aging
Full Proceedings: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Software engineering, Italy, 1994.

Labels: aging, software, Software engineering