Three Laws of Software Development
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Three Laws of Software Development

Inspired by Mitch Denny -- and based upon asimov's laws of robotics.

  1. A developer must write code that creates value.
  2. A developer must expend effort making their code easy to maintain, except where such expenditure will conflict with the first law.
  3. A developer must reduce their code to the smallest size possible, as long as such reduction does not conflict with the first two laws.

Everytime you break one of these laws, Bill Gates kills a puppy.





'http://' on Fri, 05 Jan 2007 10:53:22 GMT, sez:

Hilarious! I printe this out and stick it on my cubicle walls



'Jameson' on Fri, 05 Jan 2007 12:06:09 GMT, sez:

I think I may break these laws on purpose just so I can make Bill Gates do things.



'martinus' on Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:50:16 GMT, sez:

Very good :-) Just remove "expend efford" from the second rule, then it is perfect



'Keith' on Fri, 05 Jan 2007 20:18:58 GMT, sez:

Does he kill his own puppies or does he kill others?

if (Gates.puppies_killed == Gates.own_puppies)
{
Laws.break();
} else {
Laws.follow();
}



'hey keith' on Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:22:35 GMT, sez:

SELECT Count(*)
FROM DeadPuppies dp
INNER JOIN People m ON dp.MurdererID = m.id
AND m.Name = 'Bill Gates'
WHERE dp.OwnerID = dp.MurdererID

but surely the puppies don't deserve to die just because you don't like their owner? Unless it's to put them out of their misery.



'Jarrett' on Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:31:33 GMT, sez:

I disagree with "hey keith's" basic architecture.

You'd be more likely to have a Puppy table, and a Puppymurders table, rather than a DeadPuppies table.

Particularly if you're interested in things like the OwnerID of the puppy you probably want to track live puppies, not just dead ones. Hence this system will be hard to maintain.

As punishment for this, I have written to Bill Gates with instructions that he kill one puppy.



'the G man' on Sat, 06 Jan 2007 10:01:02 GMT, sez:

>Does he kill his own puppies or does
>he kill others?

He's the richest man in the world. surely he pays someone else to kill the puppies for him.

I expect he randomly select a puppy to kill from all of the puppies he sees on the given day.



'hobit' on Sat, 06 Jan 2007 16:31:54 GMT, sez:

3. A developer must increase the performance of their code as high as possible, as long as the result does not conflict with the first two laws.



'offshore ontwikkeling' on Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:07:27 GMT, sez:

Ain't Bill killing enough nerves, he has to kill puppies as well? I'm a programmer but never had such big problems with my work as Gates has with his windows and it's not even him programming! Hire me, you puppy killer!



'seo software' on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:44:27 GMT, sez:

Starting out with optimized code in mind, the project will take less time in the end.




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