7th Update for The Maxims of Software Engineering

Hey folks!

You have all been very patiently waiting for a year since I started writing. So I figured lets just work in public now, and give you all the draft.

I have a couple reasons for doing this.

For one, I was encouraged to do this by Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb, after we had a brief chat a few weeks back. And another, I found myself wanting to literally link to the stuff that I had locked up in a draft. And to me, that's the real value of this stuff. To be able to do things with it, rather than just think about it.

So here you all are: https://robertroskam.com/books/maxims-of-software-engineering/​

You'll notice several changes. First, it's not "the Laws of Software Engineering" any more, but rather the Maxims of Software Engineering.
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The concepts aren't really "laws" in my opinion. That language tends to have a weight to. More than is warranted. They're mostly just some person noticing something and writing it down in a book, and then another person elsewhere points back to that other book and slams the author's name in front of "law".
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After seeing this enough, I was starting to doubt the value of just collecting all this up again, so I spent most of my time for each "law" seeing if there was an empiricism around these, any kind of proof at all. And generally, the answer was not really. That doesn't mean these are false, but probably that these are hard to verify, especially since they deal with the socio-technical aspects of software engineering.

So why "maxim" then?

A maxim is a saying assumed to be true, an axiom of practical wisdom. It feels calibrated to the correct level of claim.

And I don't think this is the final thing I'll be changing my mind on these things. I think I'll keep reading and learning.

Moreover, there are now two websites that describe themselves as the laws of engineering engineering and one book. To be clear, I don't want to cast stones and claim that anyone "stole my idea". Simultaneously invention/discovery is fairly common event. But I also don't want people conflating my work with the other work.

So yes, I will absolutely be changing and tweaking stuff over time, and yes, I still am working towards making it an actual book.

Enjoy!
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Robert Roskam
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P.S. I'll be starting to send a newsletter every Friday. It may or may not include updates about the book. If you don't want them, no worries. Just unsubscribe from that, I won't be offended.