Synthetic Monitoring

Simulate visitor interaction with your site to monitor the end user experience.

View Product Info

FEATURES

Simulate visitor interaction

Identify bottlenecks and speed up your website.

Learn More

Real User Monitoring

Enhance your site performance with data from actual site visitors

View Product Info

FEATURES

Real user insights in real time

Know how your site or web app is performing with real user insights

Learn More

Infrastructure Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Instant visibility into servers, virtual hosts, and containerized environments

View Infrastructure Monitoring Info
Comprehensive set of turnkey infrastructure integrations

Including dozens of AWS and Azure services, container orchestrations like Docker and Kubernetes, and more 

Learn More

Application Performance Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Comprehensive, full-stack visibility, and troubleshooting

View Application Performance Monitoring Info
Complete visibility into application issues

Pinpoint the root cause down to a poor-performing line of code

Learn More

Log Management and Analytics Powered by SolarWinds Loggly

Integrated, cost-effective, hosted, and scalable full-stack, multi-source log management

 View Log Management and Analytics Info
Collect, search, and analyze log data

Quickly jump into the relevant logs to accelerate troubleshooting

Learn More

Quirky but (mostly) useful software development rules


There are plenty of both formal and informal rules that programmers love to quote, either because they’re fun or quirky, or simply because they are useful and thought-provoking.
We’ve gathered some of the most interesting ones for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

The ninety-ninety rule

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.

Hofstadter’s law

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

Brooks’s law

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Lister’s law

People under time pressure don’t think faster.

The MoSCoW method

A technique to prioritize delivery requirements during development. MoSCoW stands for:
M – MUST have this.
S – SHOULD have this if at all possible.
C – COULD have this if it does not affect anything else.
W – WON’T have this time but WOULD like in the future.

The KISS principle

Keep It Simple, Stupid. In other words: avoid complexity, embrace simplicity.

Gall’s law

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.

Worse is better (New Jersey style)

Describes how a seemingly “inferior” product can be better from a user perspective. A limited but easy-to-use software may be more popular among users than a “better”, more comprehensive one.

Greenspun’s tenth rule

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
(A funny note is that there are no preceding rules, only the tenth. According to Philip Greenspun, this was because he was “just trying to give the rule a memorable name.”)

Zawinski’s law

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

Linus’s law

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

Murphy’s law

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Sutton’s law

Go where the money is.
(When attempting to diagnose a problem, confirm the most likely diagnosis first (i.e. test the most likely solution first). Named after Bank robber Willie Sutton, who robbed banks “because that’s where the money is”.)

Wirth’s law

Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.

Conway’s law

Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.
(Interesting example of how this can cause problems: NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter crashed because one development team used English units while the other used metric units to control the thrusters.)

The Hollywood principle

Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
(Instead of your program running the system, the system runs your program.)

The Dilbert Principle

The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.

Your favorite rule/law?

There are sure to be plenty of useful/funny/interesting development laws and rules we haven’t included here, so let us know in the comments if we missed your favorite!
Sources: Wikipedia for everything except Lister’s law which we found here.
Image credit: The always excellent Geek and Poke.

Introduction to Observability

These days, systems and applications evolve at a rapid pace. This makes analyzi [...]

Webpages Are Getting Larger Every Year, and Here’s Why it Matters

Last updated: February 29, 2024 Average size of a webpage matters because it [...]

A Beginner’s Guide to Using CDNs

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Websites have become larger and more complex [...]

The Five Most Common HTTP Errors According to Google

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Sometimes when you try to visit a web page, [...]

Page Load Time vs. Response Time – What Is the Difference?

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Page load time and response time are key met [...]

Monitor your website’s uptime and performance

With Pingdom's website monitoring you are always the first to know when your site is in trouble, and as a result you are making the Internet faster and more reliable. Nice, huh?

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL

MONITOR YOUR WEB APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

Gain availability and performance insights with Pingdom – a comprehensive web application performance and digital experience monitoring tool.

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL
Start monitoring for free