Software rot is the degradation of computer software due to outdated programming. It can cause slower performance and inefficiency, but can be fixed through updates or reinstalling. There are two types: inactive and active, caused by infrequent use or poor updates.
Software rot is the slow degradation of computer software due to failures to keep its programming current with the rest of a computer system. The term “software rot” is a misnomer, because software isn’t actually decaying; it just doesn’t update properly, which makes it run slower, and it seems like it’s wobbling. This is usually not a permanent change, and reinstalling the software or running effective updates can often fix the problem. In a broad sense, this type of rot is classified as active or inactive, depending on the use of the software.
As software ages, there may be physical problems with its bits and encoding. In most cases, this is not what happens in rot software. At the same time, the changes observed with both problems could be similar, as the software slows down and becomes less efficient. A minor cause of this is unused programming, which has a greater tendency to rot than more active coding.
The root cause of software rot is that software no longer addresses the current computing environment. This can be a result of poor updates not fixing such problems or no updates at all. For example, if there is a program that depends entirely on a certain clock speed to run, that program will become less efficient as clock speeds increase with better hardware. The program would not know how to handle the higher speeds and would start to rot.
Rotting like this can usually be fixed in one of two ways. If the software still, or partially, reflects the current computing environment, the user must reinstall the program. This has the ability to remove artifacts and speed up the program to how it was when the user first received it. The other way to fix software rot is to update the program, but normally this can only be done by the programmer and updates should fix any functionality issues.
There are two main types of software rot: inactive and active. Idle rot refers to problems with software that is infrequently opened or updated, which can cause artifacts to appear or the program to no longer reflect what users and computers need. Active rot occurs when the program is used and updated, but the updates do not reflect the changes necessary to properly adapt to the computer environment or the original source code has been modified so much that it causes problems.
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