Granted, I'm neither a software developer nor an engineer, but a scientist in a multi-disciplinary R&D team. Still, I have a handful of sayings and "laws" that

Granted, I'm neither a software developer nor an engineer, but a scientist in a multi-disciplinary R&D team. Still, I have a handful of sayings and "laws" that I find to be useful. I'm certainly not trying to codify engineering into a list of rules, but rather, capturing lessons that I've learned over the decades. Some of my laws seem like general principles, others are based on physics laws captured as rules of thumb that the engineers can use for thinking their way through design problems specific to our industry. Some poke fun at engineering habits, in a way that reinforces why those habits are usually a good thing. If you write down too many principles, chances are, someone will figure out a single principle that summarizes all of them, and it becomes the new principle. I think it was Taleb who pointed out that for every saying, there's usually a contradictory saying, allowing you to reinforce any idea by choosing the right sayings.