Principle Glossary

Browse 5 principle terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

5 Principle Terms

Conway's Law: 'Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.' In other...
DRY: Don't Repeat Yourself — a principle that every piece of knowledge should have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system. Violation is...
KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid — a design principle stating that most systems work best when they are kept simple rather than made complicated. Attributed to aircraft...
Linus's Law: Linus's Law is the observation that given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow, meaning that with a sufficiently large number of reviewers and testers,...
YAGNI: You Aren't Gonna Need It — a principle of extreme programming that states a programmer should not add functionality until deemed necessary. The antidote to...