Murphy's Laws and Other Observations
Murphy's Laws
- If anything can go wrong, it will.
- If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage
will be the first one to go wrong.
- If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
- If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent
these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
- Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
- Mother nature is a bitch.
- Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
- Every solution breeds new problems.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.
- Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.
- The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional to the level of management.
- Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
- Experts arose from their own urgent need to exist.
Murphy's Corollaries
- Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
- It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious
- Law of the Perversity of Nature (Mrs. Murphy's Corollary): You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
- Corollary (Jenning): The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
- To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
- When all else fails, read the instructions.
Commentaries
- Hill's Commentaries on Murphy's Laws
- If we lose much by having things go wrong, take all possible care.
- If we have nothing to lose by change, relax.
- If we have everything to gain by change, relax.
- If it doesn't matter, it does not matter.
- O'Toole's Commentary
- Murphy was an optimist.
- Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics
- Things get worse under pressure
Ginsberg's Theorems
- You can't win.
- You can't break even.
- You can't even quit the game.
Forsyth's Second Corollary to Murphy's Laws
Just when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, the roof caves in.
Weiler's Law
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
The Laws of Computer Programming
- Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain
it.
- Any given program, when running, is already obsolete.
- Any given program costs more and takes longer each time it is run.
- If a program is useful, it have to be changed.
- If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
- Any given program will expand to fill all the available memory.
- The value of a program is inversely proportional to the size of its output.
- Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
- All's well that ends.
- A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
- The first myth of management is that it exists.
- A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection.
- New systems generate new problems.
- Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
- The Murphy Philosophy
- Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.
- Murphy's Constant
- Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value
Pierce's Law
In any computer system, the machine will always misinterpret, misconstrue, misprint, or not evaluate
any math or subroutines or fail to print any output on at least the first run through.
Corollary to Pierce's Law
When a compiler accepts a program without error on the first run, the program will not yield the desired
output.
Addition to Murphy's Laws
In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right ... something is wrong.
Brook's Law
If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set!
Grosch's Law
Computing power increases as the square of the cost.
Golub's Laws of Computerdom
- Fuzzy project objectives are used to avoid embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs.
- A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully
planned project takes only twice as long.
- The effort required to correct course increases geometrically with time.
- Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of
progress.
Osborn's Law
Variables won't; constants aren't.
Gilb's Laws of Unreliability
- Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
- Any system that depends upon human reliability is unreliable.
- Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition
are limited.
- Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until
someone insists on getting some useful work done.
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology
There's always one more bug.
Troutman's Postulate
- Profanity is the one language understood by all programmers.
- Not until a program has been in production for six months will the most harmful error be discovered.
- Job control cards that positively cannot be arranged in improper order will be.
- Interchangeable tapes won't.
- If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious idiot will discover
a method to get bad data past it.
- If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent systems will malfunction.
Weinberg's Second Law
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came
along would destroy civilization.
Gumperson's Law
The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.
Gummidge's Law
The amount of expertise varies in inverse ratio to the number of statements understood by the general
public.
Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can (old worms never die,
they just worm their way into larger cans).
Harvard's LawUnder the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity and other
variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
Sattinger's Law
It works better if you plug it in.
Jenkinson's Law
It won't work.
Horner's Five Thumb Postulate
Experience increase directly with equipment ruined.
Cheop's Law
Nothing ever gets build on schedule or within budget.
Rule of Accuracy
When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.
Zymurg's Seventh Exception to Murphy's Law
When it rains, it pours.
Pudder's Laws
- Anything that begins well ends badly.
- Anything that begins badly ends worse.
Westheimer's Rule
To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by
two and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus, we allocate two days for a one hour
task.
Stockmayer's Theorem
If it looks easy, it's tough. If it looks tough, it's damn near impossible.
Atwoods Corollary
No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted to keep.
Johnson's Third Law
If you miss one issue of any magazine, it will be the issue that contains the article, story or installment
you were most anxious to read.
Corollary to Johnson's Third Law
All of your friends either missed it, lost it or threw it out.
Harper's Magazine Law
You never find the article until you replace it.
Brooke's Law
Adding manpower to a late software makes it later.
Finagle's Fourth Law
Once a job is fooled up, anything done to improve it will only make it worse.
Featherkile's Rule
Whatever you did, that's what you planned.
Flap's Law
Any inanimate object, regardless of its position, configuration or purpose, may be expected to perform
at any time in a totally unexpected manner for reasons that are either entirely obscure or else completely
mysterious.
Burkhard Kirste,
1993/07/17.
