rc3.org

Bill Gates on software development:

There’s only really one metric to me for future software development, which is — do you write less code to get the same thing done?

It’s difficult to argue with that. Microsoft developer Mike Champion talks about getting there.

The way I see it, there are two tracks that you can take to less code. One is more and better libraries, and the other is less language and environment overhead. I’d say that the Java ecosystem has a good story to tell in terms of libraries, and not such a good story to tell in terms of overhead. Ruby on Rails, at least so far, seems to succeed in both areas for a pretty large class of applications (though not as large as Java). I’m not sure where .NET falls into the mix. PHP, I’d say, is just OK in terms of libraries, and the amount of overhead varies widely depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.