Hacker Laws

Here’s a quickie that I stumbled on the other day. Dave Kerr has a nice GitHub repository that’s gathered a collection of “laws” and aphorisms that all Geeks know and love. He calls it hacker-laws. Many of the laws, such as Murphy’s Law, Parkinson’s Law, and The Peter Principal, are familiar to the population at large. Others, such as Hanlon’s Razor, are a little less known. Still others, such as the Law of Leaky Abstractions, and the Unix Philosophy are specialized for us geeks.

My favorite, though, is Cunningham’s Law. It has the virtue of being both screamingly funny and true. Cunningham’s Law says that the way to get a question answered correctly on the Internet is not to ask the question but to post the wrong answer. Once you think about it, the truth and humor of the law is obvious.

Kerr’s list contains many examples of humorous wisdom. It’s definitely worth taking a look to see if there are any that you don’t already know.

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