Laws of Computer Programming

• Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
• If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
• If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
• Any program will expand to fill any available memory.
• The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
• Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer to maintain it.
• Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
• Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in.
• Weinberg's Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
• Hoare's Law of Large Programs: Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.
• Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

• Keep it simple, Stupid.
• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.-----Albert Einstein
• 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.-----C.A.R. Hoare
• The price of reliability is the pursuit of utmost simplicity.-----C.A.R. Hoare
• Occam's Razor: Do not multiply concepts beyond necessity.----- William of Occam, 14th century logician. [He actually said Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitate.]

• The wise programmer does not give two names to one thing nor attribute two things to one name.
• Names are meaningful and specific, and their length is proportional to their scope. A loop variable used only once in a two-statement loop may be called "i", but a global variable that may be used anywhere in the program will have a long name that accurately describes its usage.-----D. Boundy

• Work expands to fill the time available.-----C.N. Parkinson
• In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.-----The Peter Principle
• The software project had to be abandoned, and with it, over thirty man-years of programming effort. "You know what went wrong? You let your programmers do things you yourself do not understand." How could one person ever understand the whole of a modern software product?-----C.A.R. Hoare

Laws of the Universe

• Ruckert's Law: There is nothing so small that it can't be blown out of proportion.
• Ringwald's Law of Household Geometry: Any horizontal surface is soon piled up on.
• Diner's Dilemma: A clean tie attracts the Soup of the Day.
• Thiessen's Law of Gastronomy: The hardness of the butter is in direct proportion to the softness of the roll.