Comments on: Quirky but (mostly) useful software development rules

By: Danzibar

Danzibar — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:31:20 +0000

Danzibar’s Rule:

If something can go wrong, it already HAS. Be prepared.

By: Pma94301

Pma94301 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:49:14 +0000

The Sunnyvale Principle:
There’s never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:36:18 +0000

Hi you got me thinking about Moore’s law vs Writh’s law. If it was true then surely software would be so slow/complex that is wouldn’t run on todays computers! Anyway I looked as software complexity based on the growth of Lines of Code for a desktop operating system and plotted that against CPU power increase.

http://performancetestersdiary.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/wriths-verses-moores-law/

By: Andrew from Vancouver

Andrew from Vancouver — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:28:31 +0000

The Dilbert Principle is a funny variation of the Peter Principle which is “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

… and I’ve found that Conway’s Law is better represented by contrasting that an ITIL-laden company you will find huge amount of comments and error checking and references to dates and supporting documents in the sourcecode, but in a more lithe company the same sourcecode will be a small shell script.

By: Kenneth Wildenhain

Kenneth Wildenhain — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:03:08 +0000

Kermit’s Law

To err is human, but to realy f*&# things up you need a computer.

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:24:39 +0000

Occam’s Razor also.

By: Mayson

Mayson — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:24:53 +0000

Sturgeon’s Law usually applies.

By: Andy Baker

Andy Baker — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:16:01 +0000

The Conway example doesn’t quite fit my understanding of the ‘law’.

By: drewmud

drewmud — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:38:13 +0000

My favorite rule which I apply whenever my technology gets messed up by someone is Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

By: Pingdom

Pingdom — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:38:33 +0000

@FuePi: It’s actually not an error, but I see where you’re coming from. See the Wikipedia entry for the ninety-ninety rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule People just modify it sometimes to make it add up to 100% (like you just did). It’s a pretty common rewrite, apparently.