Las leyes de Murphy generales y para IT (Murphy's Laws of Information Technology)

Las famosas e infames leyes de Murphy son conocidas por todo el mundo. Se aplican a todas las disciplinas humanas, pero estoy seguro que al software le afecta mas de lo común, debido a la juventud de esta actividad. Les dejo las principales leyes de Murphy:

• Nothing is as easy as it looks.
• Everything takes longer than you think.
• Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
• 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. Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.
• You never run out of things that can go wrong.
• If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
• If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
• If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
• It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
• Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
• Every solution breeds new problems.

Dejando atrás las leyes generales, entremos en las leyes de Murhpy aplicadas a IT, que son las originales extrapoladas a este campo.

Sobre Hardware:

• Law of Inconvenient Malfunction: A device will fail at the least opportune possible moment.
• Law of Cable Compatibility: If you choose a cable and a connector at random, the probability that they are compatible is equal to zero.
• Law of Hardware Compatibility: The probability of a given peripheral being compatible with a PC is inversely proportional to the immediate need for that peripheral.
• Law of Bad Sectors: The probability that an untested diskette will have bad sectors is directly proportional to the importance of the data written onto the diskette.
• First Law of Selective Gravitation: When an object is dropped, it will fall in such a way as to cause the greatest possible damage to itself and/or other objects on which it lands.
• Second Law of Selective Gravitation: The tendency for an object to be dropped is directly proportional to its value.
• Law of Reality Change: Unalterable hardware specifications will change as necessary to maximize frustration for personnel affected by said specifications.
• Law of Noise: Noise bursts occur so as to cause the most, and/or most serious, errors in data communications, regardless of the actual amount of noise present.
• Law of Expectation: Consumer expectations always outpace advances in hardware technology.
• Law of the Titanic: If a device cannot malfunction, it will.

Sobre programación:

• Law of Debugging: The difficulty of debugging software is directly proportional to the number of people who will ultimately use it.
• Law of Neurosis: The chances of software being neurotic (developing bugs spontaneously without apparent reason) is directly proportional to the confusion such neurosis can cause.
• Law of Available Space: If there are n bytes in a crucial software program, the available space for its convenient storage or loading is equal to n-1 bytes.
• First Law of Bad Sectors: The probability of software being mutilated by bad sectors is directly proportional to the value and/or importance of the programs.
• Second Law of Bad Sectors: When a program is mutilated by bad sectors, the damage will occur at the point(s) that result in the most frequent and/or severe errors when the program is run.
• Law of Noise: When a downloaded program is corrupted by noise, the corruption will occur at the point(s) that result in the most frequent and/or severe errors when the program is run.
• Law of Software Compatibility: If two programs are chosen at random, the probability that they are compatible is equal to zero.
• Law of Option Preferences: When two people share a computer, their software option preferences will differ in every possible way.
• Law of Expectation: Consumer expectations always outpace advances in software technology.
• Law of the Titanic: Bug-free software isn't.

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