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Hacker Laws (hacker-laws.com)
127 points by kaonwarb 9 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments


Hoare's Law of Large Programs: Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.


Sometimes I see a post and immediately know it’s going to take over my day. I’ll probably spend at least three hours reading this and the linked wikipedia articles.


So many people get Occam’s razor wrong. I like the way you describe it as the least number of concepts and assumptions, rather than just “simplest”.


I feel this is a side-effect of so many people getting "simple" wrong, as in, calling things simple because they superficially seem so, even while being aware of but ignoring the underlying complexities.


Completely agree. It's entirely about eliminating unnecessary distinctions, not about relative simplicity (which would need to be defined in context—we do not have a universal notion or measure of "simplicity" or complexity—any such notions we do have are domain dependent and usually observer dependent).


How is "least number of concepts and assumptions" different than “simplest”?


I often found when something involves an insanely large number or objects the 90–9–1 Principle holds true. But when things is smaller to medium size 80/20 can be used. But I still dont have a good / decent theory how to link the two together. I wonder if anyone has any materials on it.


To the author: "Download the PDF eBook" link

https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws/releases/download/v0....

is broken


In case somebody comes looking for the working link: https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws/releases/download/v0....


just saw this, fixing at the moment


Good collection. One rule I found missing is the Rule of Three: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(computer_prog...


love it, tracking now


To the author: Nice site. The very first link, https://effective-shell/, is broken.



thanks for the heads up, just fixed!


I'd add Wirth's Law: Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.



Don't forget WET (write everything twice)


That's under DRY.


Please add

Jevons Paradox





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