Hacker Laws
Hacker Laws for coders.
Schema
Metcalfe's Law
According to Metcalfe's Law the value of a network is proportional to the square of its number of nodes. Computers, servers, and even users can be end nodes.
Conway's Law
Any piece of software reflects the organisational communication structure that produced it.
Related to product design and the observed impact of communication structures on software output.
- a tight-knit group with coordinated behaviour creates software with entwined features and code.
- a more relaxed, decentralised team, meanwhile, creates more modular software.
Gall's Law
Gall's Law states that all complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked. If you want to build a complex system that works, build a simpler system first, and then improve it over time.
Lindy's Effect
The Lindy Effect is a theory that the future life expectancy of a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy.
Moore's law
Moore's law is a term used to refer to the observation made by Gordon Moore in 1965 that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.
Wirth's Law
Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster
Postel's Law
Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept
Knuth's Law
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
Eagleson's Law
Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else.