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Cringley's Second Law: Ease of use with equivalent performance varies with the square root of the cost of development. That means that to design a computer that's ten times easier to use would cost 100 times as much.
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Robert Cringley
computers | laws
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In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.
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Imbesi's Law of Conservation of Filth
general | funny | laws
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Looking at code you wrote more than two weeks ago is like looking at code you are seeing for the first time.
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Alzheimer's Law of Programming (via Dan Hurvitz)
computers | laws
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Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
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Hanlon's Razor
general | advice | laws
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Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you think, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
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Douglas Hofstadter
general | advice | laws
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I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
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Poul Anderson
general | funny | laws
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Paper's Law: It's not that simple.
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Herb Paper, via John Lawler
general | laws
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Furrygoat's Law: Every program expands until it can read RSS feeds.
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Steve Mafosky, based on Lett's Law: All programs evolve until they can send email.
computers | laws
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Tuchman's Law: The fact of being reported mulitplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to ten-fold (or any figure the reader would care to supply).
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Barbara Tuchman, historian
general | politics | laws
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McKean's Law: Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.
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Erin McKean (also cited as Hartman's Law of Prescriptive Retaliation)
language | editing | writing | laws
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The simpler the problem at hand, the more people think they're experts in it.
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Asa Dotzler
general | laws
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Muphrey's Law: a) if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written; (b) if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book; (c) the stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault. (d) any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.
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John Bangsund, a variant (one of several) of Hartman's Law of Prescriptive Retaliation
laws | editing | writing
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