Rule of Three
Noun · Hacker Culture
Definitions
A software design heuristic that suggests waiting until you have implemented something three times before extracting a general abstraction. It is meant to avoid premature generalization while still encouraging reuse once a pattern is real.
In plain English: A guideline that says you usually should not generalize code until the same pattern appears several times.
Example: "We kept the logic duplicated for now because the rule of three says abstraction can wait until the pattern is stable."