July 12, 2004

Hoftadter's law

I once heard Hofstadter's Law of computer software engineering:

It will always take longer than you think, even when Hofstadter's Law is taken into account.

Having just spent the day thinking and talking about fault-tolerant quantum computing, I think there's a corresponding Hofstadter's Law of quantum computer hardware engineering:

It will always be more difficult than you think, even when Hofstadter's Law is taken into account.

Posted by Michael Nielsen at July 12, 2004 04:55 PM
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