dwmkerr/hacker-laws

hacker-laws is a reference collection that gathers, in one place, many of the "laws," theories, principles and patterns that developers and technologists routinely quote in conversation, things like Brooks' Law, Conway's Law, Hyrum's Law, the Pareto Principle, the DRY and KISS principles, SOLID, YAGNI, the Robustness Principle, and so on. It is not a piece of software you run, it is a documentation project, written mostly as a long Markdown file, and it also powers a companion website at hacker-laws.com. The repository works as an explanatory glossary. Each entry names a law or principle, links to a fuller source such as a Wikipedia page, gives a short plain-language description, often includes a quoted definition, and points to related entries. The author is careful to note that the project explains these ideas but does not advocate for any of them, whether a given law should actually guide a decision is a matter of debate and depends on the context. The content is organised into two top-level sections, "Laws" (observations and inevitabilities) and "Principles" (guidelines people consciously try to follow), followed by a reading list, online resources, a PDF eBook download, and a podcast. You would reach for hacker-laws when you hear a term thrown around in a code review, a design discussion or a tech talk and want a quick, neutral explanation of what it actually means and where it came from, or when you want a single place to browse the cultural vocabulary of software engineering. The project is community-maintained, accepts pull requests, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.