This entry is quoting from BlueFlavor, GlobalNerdy and haacked. Very interesting and worthy-of-remembering laws regarding software development.
- Sturgeon’s Revelation
Ninety percent of everything is crud. - The Peter Principle
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. - Hofstadter’s Law
A task always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law. - Murphy’s Law
If anything can go wrong, it will. - Brook’s Law
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
A corollary:
The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned. - Conway’s Law
Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it
Another way of putting it:
If you have four groups working on a compiler, you’ll get a 4-pass compiler. - Linus’s Law
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. - Wirth’s law
Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. - Fitt’s Law
Time = a + b log2 ( D / S + 1 )
Which means:
The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and the size of the target. - Hick’s Law
The time to make a decision is a function of the possible choices he or she has.
Mathematically:
Time = b log2(n + 1) - Lister’s Law
People under time pressure don’t think faster. - Occam’s Razor
The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. - Hartree’s Law
Whatever the state of a project, the time a project-leader will estimate for completion is constant. - Augustine’s Second Law of Socioscience
For every scientific (or engineering) action, there is an equal and opposite social reaction. - Clarke’s Third Law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Dilbert Principle
The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. - Joy's Law
smart(employees) = log(employees), or “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” - Pesticide Paradox
Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffectual.
