Murphy's laws on technology
- You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.
- Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
- Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expandes it beyond recognition.
- Technology is dominated by those who manage what they don't understand
- If builder built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
- The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord.
- An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
- Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll belive you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
- All great discoveries are made by mistake.
- Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
- Nothing ever gets built on schedules or within budget.
- All's well that ends.
- A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
- The first myth of management is that it exists.
- A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection.
- New systems generate new problems.
- To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
- We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
- Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.
- Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.
- Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even the book.
- The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
- To spot the expert, pick one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
- After all is said and done, all hell of a lot more is said than done.
- Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under
development.
- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
- If mathematically you ends up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying with the page number.
- Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unrealiable. Any system which depends on humans reliability is unreliable.
- Give an order verbally. Never write anything down that might go into a "Pearl Harbor File."
- Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity and other vaiables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
- If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
- The more cordial the buyer's secretary, the greater the odds that the competition already has the order.
- In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can be totalled correctly after 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The correct total will become self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on Monday.
- Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
- All things are poosible except skiing through a revolving door.
- The only perfect science is hind-sight.
- Work smarder and not harder and be careful with your speling.
- If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.
- If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
- When all else fails, read the instructions.
- If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
- Everything that goes up must come down.
- Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.
- Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way.
- Build a system that even a fool can use and only the fool will use it.
- The degree of technical competence is inversely propotional to the level of management.
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