The 20 Software Engineering Laws
SMRTR summary
A startup once spent months building a microservices platform for millions of users they didn't have yet. That story, repeated across the industry, is exactly why software development laws exist.
These aren't rules about code. They're rules about people. Brooks's Law says adding engineers to a late project only makes it later. Hofstadter's Law warns that work always takes longer than expected, even after you've accounted for that. Goodhart's Law reminds us that once a metric becomes a target, it stops measuring anything real.
What makes these laws remarkable is their durability. Some date back to 1975. None of them have aged.
From Gall's Law, which holds that every working complex system grew from a simpler one that worked first, to Cunningham's Law, which reveals that posting the wrong answer online gets you the right one faster than asking a question, these principles map the terrain where human ambition meets organizational reality.
The lesson isn't to memorize them all. It's to recognize them before the project fails, not after.
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