![]() This is why concepts like pair programming work well in certain contexts after all, more often than not, the bug is in your code. In other words, if you can't find the problem, get someone else to help. "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." ![]() Raymond developed this law, which he named after Linus Torvalds. Of all the laws in this list, the Dunning-Kruger effect may be the most powerful, if for no other reason than it has been actively investigated in a formal setting by a real-life research team. What follows from this is a bias in which people who aren't very good at their job think they are good at it, but aren't skilled enough to recognize that they aren't. "Unskilled persons tend to mistakenly assess their own abilities as being much more competent than they actually are." Researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger, conducting an experiment in 1999, observed a phenomenon that's come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: In short, the fastest way to solve many problems at once is the find and fix their common root cause. ![]() Many of the problems we see, whether coding, dealing with customers, or just living our lives, share a small set of common root issues that, if solved or alleviated, can cause most or all of the problems we see to disappear. Have you even been in a situation where your app currently has hundreds of errors, but when you track down one of the problems, a disproportionate amount of said errors just up and vanish? If you have (and you probably have), then you've experienced the Pareto Principle in action. "80% of the effects stem from 20% of the causes." The Pareto Principle is usually worded as: Romanian-American engineer Joseph M Juran formulated this adage, which he named after an idea proposed by Italian economist and thinker Vilfredo Pareto. The last Basic Law of Software Development is the Pareto Principle. Most people want to learn, not be mean for the fun of it. "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."ĭon't assume people are malicious assume they are ignorant, and then help them overcome that ignorance. This is the crux of an adage known as Hanlon's Razor, which states: Rather, it's because they don't know any better. I try to remember, though, that the vast majority of actions done by people which may seem malicious are not intentionally so. They push buttons they weren't supposed to, found flaws that shouldn't have been visible to them (since they weren't to me), and generally make big swaths of my life more difficult than it would otherwise be. Sometimes I feel like users are intentionally trying to piss me off. I'd even go so far as to argue that in the vast majority of cases, simpler is better. Occam's Razor is so basic, so fundamental, that it should be the first thing we think of when deciding between two competing theories. It's no surprise that the whole reason we can recall an adage from 600+ years ago is that it works so well. "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected." This widely-known adage dates to a philosopher and friar from the fourteenth century named William of Ockham. (AKA How To Sound Smart At Your Next Team Meeting) Occam's Razor ![]()
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