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 fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
• Technology is dominated by those who manage what they don't understand: If builders 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 believe 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 schedule 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• Any given program, when running, is obsolete.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 read 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, a 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• Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.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 end up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying with the page number.
• Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on a human's 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 variables, the organism will do as it 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 totaled 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 possible except skiing through a revolving door.
• The only perfect science is hind-sight.
• Work smarter and not harder and be careful with your spelling.
• 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 proportional to the level of management.

Visit the computer definition to read "A Computer Person's Prayer."