Overview
Postel's Law
- Jon Postel
- Be strict in what you send, and generous in what you accept
- A generalization of a section described in RFC793, which defined TCP
- A principle in internet communication
Parkinson's Law
- Cyril Northcote Parkinson
- First Law
- The amount of work expands to fill the time available for its completion
- Second Law
- Expenditures rise to meet income
- A law proposed in "Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress"
- Application to computers
- The amount of data expands to fill the available storage space
Pareto's Principle
- Vilfredo Pareto
- In many phenomena, 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes
- A theory in economics
Sturgeon's Law
- Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon
- Ninety percent of everything is crap
Peter's Principle
- Laurence Johnston Peter
- In an organization, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence
- A sociological law
- An engineer gets promoted → becomes a manager → fails to perform → becomes incompetent
Hofstadter's Law
- Douglas Richard Hofstadter
- Tasks always take longer than expected, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account
Murphy's Law
- Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr.
- Anything that can go wrong will go wrong
Brooks' Law
- Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr.
- Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
Conway's Law
- Melvin Edward Conway
- Any piece of software reflects the structure of the organization that produced it
Kerckhoffs' Principle
- Auguste Kerckhoffs
- A cryptographic system should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge
Linus' Law
- Linus Benedict Torvalds
- Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow
Reed's Law
- David Patrick Reed
- The utility of large networks, particularly social networks, increases exponentially with the size of the network
Metcalfe's Law
- Robert Melancton Metcalfe
- In network theory, the value of a system is proportional to the square of the number of its users
Moore's Law
- Gordon Earle Moore
- The density of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every 18 months
Rock's Law
- Arthur Rock
- The cost of producing microprocessors doubles every four years
Wirth's Law
- Niklaus Emil Wirth
- Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is getting faster
Zawinski's Law
- James Werner Zawinski
- Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those that cannot are replaced by those that can.
Fitts' Law
- Paul Morris Fitts Jr.
- The time required to reach a target is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target
Hick's Law
- William Edmund Hick
- The time it takes to make a decision is proportional to the number of alternatives
