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Software Engineers 13 Law Cards

Tim Mercer
Apr 24, 2025
1 min read

Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's Law for Software Engineer's:
Bugs and technical debt expand to fill the available time for all projects

Hyrum's Law

Hyrum's Law for Software Engineer's:
With enough users, all observable behaviors will be depended upon by somebody
Removing unused features becomes challenging due to user dependence

Hofstadter's Law

Hofstadter's Law for Software Engineer's:
Code always takes longer than you expect, even when you account for Hofstadter's Law

Price's Law

Price's Law for Software Engineer's:
In any group, 50% of the work is done by the square root number of people
Scaling teams requires exponential hiring for linear output growth

Brooks' Law

Brooks' Law for Software Engineer's:
Adding a contributor to your repo increases your PR overhead and time to deliver updates.

Ringelmann Effect

Ringelmann Effect for Software Engineer's:
As group size increases, individual productivity decreases
Loss of motivation & coordination problems; small teams are more efficient.

Conway's Law

Conway's Law for Software Engineer's:
Systems mirror the communication structures of the organizations that produce them

Goodhart's Law

Goodhart's Law for Software Engineer's:
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

Cunningham's Law

Cunningham's Law for Software Engineer's:
Posting wrong answers often leads to correct ones, as coders love correcting others

Gilb's Law

Gilb's Law for Software Engineer's:
Anything that can be quantified can be measured in some way

Sturgeon's Law

Sturgeon's Law for Software Engineer's:
90% of the code is crap; understanding this helps you get through the day

Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law for Software Engineer's
Anything code that can have a bug will have a bug.

Zawinski's Law

Zawinski's Law for Software Engineer's:
Programs attempt to increase their feature creep with each iteration losing the purpose.

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