62 Laws Every Nerd Should Remember By Heart
Posted on 22 November 2008 by R. MAK.
- Amdahl’s Law: The speed-up achievable on a parallel computer can be significantly limited by the existence of a small fraction of inherently sequential code which cannot be parallelised. (Gene Amdahl)
- Augustine’s Second Law of Socioscience: For every scientific (or engineering) action, there is an equal and opposite social reaction. (Norman Augustine)
- Benford’s Law: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available. (Gregory Benford)
- Brooks’ Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. (Frederick P Brooks Jr)
- Church-Turing Thesis: Every function which would naturally be regarded as computable can be computed by the universal Turing machine.
- Clarke’s First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. (Arthur C Clarke)
- Clarke’s Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. (Arthur C Clarke)
- Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C Clarke)
- Conway’s Law: If you have four groups working on a compiler, you’ll get a 4-pass compiler. (Melvin Conway)
- Cope’s Law: There is a general tendency toward size increase in evolution. (Edward Drinker Cope)
- Dilbert Principle: The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. (Scott Adams)
- Deutsch’s Seven Fallacies of Distributed Computing: Reliable delivery; Zero latency; Infinite bandwidth; Secure transmissions; Stable topology; Single adminstrator; Zero cost. (Peter Deutsch)
- Ellison’s Law: The userbase for strong cryptography declines by half with every additional keystroke or mouseclick required to make it work. (Carl Ellison)
- Ellison’s Law: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. (Harlan Ellison)
- Ellison’s Law: Once the business data have been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts. (Larry Ellison)
- Finagle’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will. (?Larry Niven)
- Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem: The more highly adapted an organism becomes, the less adaptable it is to any new change. (R A Fisher)
- Fitts’s Law: The movement time required for tapping operations is a linear function of the log of the ratio of the distance to the target divided by width of the target. (Paul Fitts)
- Flon’s axiom: There does not now, nor will there ever, exist a programming language in which it is the least bit hard to write bad programs. (Lawrence Flon)
- Gilder’s Law: Bandwidth grows at least three times faster than computer power. (George Gilder)
People Who Liked This Article Also Read:
Tags | 62 laws, Andy Grove, Arthur C Clarke, Arthur Rock, artificial intelligence, Bill Joy, Bruce Beizer, Carl Ellison, Charles Hoare, cryptography, decisions systems, Don Osborn, Douglas Hartree, Douglas Hofstadter, Edward A Murphy, Edward Drinker Cope, elderly scientist, Fisher, Frank Demmler, Frederick P Brooks Jr, Gene Amdahl, George Gilder, George Spafford, Gerald M Weinberg, Gordon Moore, Gregory Benford, Harlan Ellison, Herbert Grosch, Hitler, Internet User Experience, Isaac Asimov, Jakob Nielsen, Jamie Zawinski, Jim Gray, Larry Ellison, Larry Niven, Larry Tesler, late software project, Laurence J Peter, law, Lawrence Flon, Leigh van Valen, Lincoln Spector, Melvin Conway, Mike Godwin, Nathan Myhrvold, Nerd laws, Norman Augustine, online discussion, Paul Fitts, Peter Deutsch, Peter Principle, production software bugs, project-leader, Queen, Ray Kurzweil, remember by heart, Robert Glass, Robert Heinlein, Robert Metcalfe, Science, Scott Adams, semiconductor fabrication equipment, Seth Lloyd, Theodore Sturgeon, Timothy Lister, Tom Cargill, William McNeill
It’s worth noting that both Amdahl’s and Grosch’s laws were basically IBM propaganda: at the time, they were facing stiff competition from minicomputers. IBM took the position that one mainframe costing $1M was more effective than ten minis costing $100K each. With the advent of fast ethernet, this position became untenable (hence the rise of server farms).
Stu Smiths last blog post..Ten Web Development Tips I Wish I’d Known Two Years Ago