Laws of Software Engineering: Collection of 56 Core Principles
Original: Laws of Software Engineering
Why This Matters
Codifies essential software engineering wisdom into accessible reference for developers
Website lawsofsoftwareengineering.com compiles 56 fundamental laws and principles governing software development, including Conway's Law, Brooks's Law, and CAP Theorem, organized by categories like architecture, teams, planning, quality, scale, design, and decisions.
The Laws of Software Engineering website presents a comprehensive collection of 56 established principles that shape software systems, teams, and decision-making processes. The compilation covers essential laws such as Conway's Law stating organizations design systems mirroring their communication structure, Brooks's Law warning that adding manpower to late projects delays them further, and Hyrum's Law noting that with sufficient API users, all observable system behaviors become dependencies. Other notable principles include the Boy Scout Rule advocating leaving code better than found, YAGNI principle against premature feature addition, CAP Theorem's distributed system constraints, and Tesler's Law on complexity conservation. The collection spans categories including architecture fundamentals, team dynamics like Dunbar's 150-person cognitive limit, planning challenges such as the Ninety-Ninety Rule, and quality principles like Technical Debt management.