
Ask HN: What are the laws/rules/aphorisms of the tech industry you subscribe to? - danhon
I&#x27;m doing research for a book and haven&#x27;t quite found a good existing list online.<p>Some example laws&#x2F;rules&#x2F;aphorisms:<p><pre><code>  * Metcalfe&#x27;s law
  * Moore&#x27;s law
  * Fitt&#x27;s law
  * You can&#x27;t improve what you don&#x27;t measure
  * Move fast and break things
  * Growth first
  * Real artists ship
  * Talent imitates, genius steals
  * Done is better than perfect &#x2F; perfect is the enemy of the good
  * Hire slow, fire faster
</code></pre>
What are some of yours?
======
danhon
Also on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/hondanhon/status/942515111427678208](https://twitter.com/hondanhon/status/942515111427678208)

    
    
      * Conway's law
      * Brooks' law
      * GIGO

------
mtmail
The pessimist in me says
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law)

------
eesmith
Here are some of the ones which have informed my thinking.

Mooers' law - "An information retrieval system will tend not to be used
whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information
than for him not to have it."

Derek Price's "exponential curve of science". This of course is connected to a
number of exponential growth laws, including Moore's Law and Engelbart's Law
("The intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential."). On the other
hand, Bradford's Law ("the exponentially diminishing returns of extending a
library search.").

If you have Fitt's law then you should have Hick's law and Miller's law, as
they are often mentioned in UX contexts.

A classic adage is "Fast, Good or Cheap. Pick two." (The followup is for
aerospace - "Pick one. And it can't be cheap.")

A related one comes from the early Unix work. The earliest citation I know is
from Stephen C. Johnson and Brian W. Kernighan - "the strategy is definitely:
first make it work, then make it right, and, finally, make it fast".
[http://wiki.c2.com/?MakeItWorkMakeItRightMakeItFast](http://wiki.c2.com/?MakeItWorkMakeItRightMakeItFast)

Brandolini's law - "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order
of magnitude bigger than to produce it."

Brooks's law - "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."

Conway's law - "Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure
that produced it."

Deutsch limit - "The problem with visual programming is that you can’t have
more than 50 visual primitives on the screen at the same time."

C.A.R. Hoare - "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way
is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
The first method is far more difficult."

Gerald Weinberg - "The human eye has an almost infinite capacity for not
seeing what it does not want to see.... Programmers, if left to their own
devices, will ignore the most glaring errors in their output -- errors that
anyone else can see in an instant."

Regarding "Talent imitates, genius steals". See
[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-
steal/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/) for some
history on that family of quotations.

Regarding "You can't improve what you don't measure", see
[https://blog.deming.org/2013/08/unknown-and-unknowable-
data/](https://blog.deming.org/2013/08/unknown-and-unknowable-data/) :
"Ironically, people often quote Dr. Deming as saying something along the lines
of: “you can’t management what you can’t measure.” Not only did he not believe
this, he thought managing as though it were true was a deadly disease of
management." The link to Fowler's essay is that you "Cannot Measure
Productivity" and adds that the aphorism is a cop out.

