Law 1C: Moore's Law is your friend - page 2

The 18th root of two is about 1.04, or plus 4 percent. Thus, "Things double every 18 months" is arithmetically identical to "Things improve by 4% every month!" or also "Things improve by 26% every 6 months".

Any improvement that you start work on today might take six months to complete, test, and make it out to the market. Moore gives you a 26% improvement in that same time, for free.

Of course, your bosses will argue that (a) Moore can't be depended on, (b) the competition is working on this too, and (c) an X percent improvement now combined with Moore's 26% improvement later gives you (X+26)%, even better than either factor alone.

But they are measuring "improvement" in only the one dimension. They aren't including the X% increase in complexity and X% increase in bug potential and in future support and in the creation of legacy complexity that will hang around forever.

But this is all a huge digression. Remember, these Laws are "notes to self". I apply them to "me". If you are not independently wealthy and need to ship a product by the end of the month, go read somebody else's book. I must follow Law #1:

   "Simplicity is the overriding consideration."

What part of "OVERRIDING" don't you understand?