Most of today's programs are crafted, line by line, by people. But Nathan Myhrvold, who studied with renowned physicist Steven Hawking and now heads Microsoft's research and development efforts, told a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in San Jose that the day is coming when software will educate and evolve itself. We're not getting smarter every year. Software grows until it is limited by Moore's law. Software makes Moore's law possible.
Software is limited only by human ambition and expectation.
In coming years, he said, software ''agents'' could busily conduct business and errands for users. We could scan our brains, digitize the information, and become one with software, he said. In 50 years, I hope I won't be talking about software. I hope I will be software. Most of the 50 years of ACM's existence have been dominated by advances in hardware, more so than in software.