The Global Nerdy blog (no, I’d never heard of it before either) has a compilation of named laws of software development. These are comments from relatively well-known (to the geek community, at least) folks that got tied to their names because they’ve held true for so long. Here are a few as a sample.

Brooks’ Law – Fred Brooks – Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Clarke’s Third Law – Arthur C. Clarke – Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. [ed note: One of my favorite attributed quotes ever, BTW]

The Law of False Alerts – George Spafford – As the rate of erroneous alerts increases, operator reliance, or belief, in subsequent warnings decreases. [ed note: Yes, that's pretty much a "Boy who cried wolf" law, but I know from experience that it is sooooo true]

Sixty-sixty Rule – Robert Glass – Sixty percent of software’s dollar is spent on maintenance, and sixty percent of that maintenance is enhancement.

The list is long, but very, very interesting. There were a few that I hadn’t heard before, but most of them I knew at least somewhat. (via boingboing)

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