The Laws of Computing

Friday, July 6th, 2007
by William

1. The Computer is always right.
2. Programmers are occasionally right.
3. The amount of time needed to debug a program is inversely proprotional to the time allotted for debugging.
4. Programs never work the first time unless there is virtually unlimited time to complete the program.
5. Any programmer can find 90% of his bugs simply by explaining his program to an uninterested observer.
6. The uninterested observer may be sleeping, dead, nonhuman, or, in extreme cases, nonexistant.
7. The most difficult or nearly impossible programming problems appear obvious or extremely simple to anyone with little or no knowledge of programming.
8. Those problems most easily solved by a programmer appear to be overwhelmingly complicated and marvelous to the layman.
9. Computers are never more intelligent than their programmers.
10. Most computers are incredibly stupid.
11. The rarest bugs in any operating system or major programming effort will always show up in a demonstration of its use to prospective users or customers.
12. These bugs usually cannot be reproduced and therfore cannot be located.
13. Customers will never purchase programs which appear to be riddled with bugs as verified by demonstration.
14. Most programs are unfit for sale.