Zawinski's Law - Laws of Software
A catalog of the laws guiding software development. Especially useful for individual contributors, new managers, and product managers who want to build well-made software.
Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can. -- James Zawinski, 1995 This law is both comical and grim at once. Many programs are totally unrelated to email: consider text editors, compilers, games, etc. Zawinski’s Law, also known as the the Law of Software Bloat, suggests that feature creep will inevitably cause all of these programs to read email even though it’s entirely unrelated to their core mission. Though there are certainly counter-examples to this specific manifestation of the law, feature creep is…
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