(noun) The tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues while avoiding complex decisions that require expertise.
The architecture review board spent forty minutes discussing button colors and five minutes approving the database migration strategy.
(noun) A principle that states one should not remove or change something (like a fence, rule, or tradition) until they understand why it was put there in the first place.
Before the team decided to remove the legacy authentication system, they invoked Chesterton’s fence and spent time understanding why it was originally implemented that way.
(noun) A thought experiment devised by philosopher John Searle in 1980 that challenges the possibility of machine consciousness and understanding.
The Chinese Room argument suggests that even sophisticated AI systems may manipulate symbols without true comprehension.
(noun) The observable alignment of a system or actor with its stated promises, constraints, and responsibilities.
The team’s comportment during The Incident demonstrated candid communication and accountability.
(noun) The theory that systems naturally evolve to perform the same function through multiple independent mechanisms.
The company maintained three separate customer databases across departments, each serving identical purposes but requiring distinct maintenance procedures.
(noun) The theory that a system designed to fail safely will fail by failing to fail safely.
The payment system was timing out, so systems began to retry failed transactions, compounding the original system overload.
(noun) The tendency of systems to resist changes imposed upon them, returning to their original state when external pressure is removed.
When the engineering team tried to implement daily standups, the organization gradually reverted to its previous informal communication patterns within a few months.
(noun) A theory that suggests the future life expectancy of certain non-perishable things is proportional to their current age.
Hate on PHP all you like, the Lindy Effect tells me it’s not going away any time soon.
(noun) The principle that members of an organization give disproportionate weight to trivial issues compared to complex, consequential matters.
The board spent two hours debating the color of the company newsletter header while approving the merger proposal in twelve minutes.
(noun) When the costs of reverting to a previous state or switching to a different path become prohibitively high, even in the face of better solutions.
The company’s reliance on Progress 4GL illustrates path dependence—despite newer technologies being available, decades of ABL development make switching platforms economically unfeasible.
(noun) The use of more words than necessary to convey meaning; deliberate redundancy in language
Technically speaking, that expression is a pleonasm—a redundant description—since all facts are, by definition, true.
(noun) A mathematical function used to reduce noise, eliminate sharp transitions, or approximate data with a continuous curve that follows the general trend while reducing fluctuations.
The machine learning model used smoothing functions to eliminate outliers from the training data.
(noun) The combination of different beliefs, practices, or systems of thought into a unified whole, often resulting in a hybrid approach that incorporates elements from multiple sources.
The team’s development methodology was pure syncretism, blending Agile sprints with waterfall documentation requirements and lean startup experimentation.
(adj) Of, relating to, or constituting a vestige; remaining as a trace of something that once existed but is no longer functional or necessary.
The appendix is a vestigial organ in humans, serving no apparent purpose in modern physiology.
(noun) The principle that time spent discussing a language feature is inversely proportional to its mathematical complexity.
The committee spent three hours debating syntax highlighting colors but only fifteen minutes on the type system’s soundness proof.
(noun) The seemingly endless series of prerequisite tasks that must be completed before you can accomplish your original goal, often leading you far away from what you initially set out to do.
Sarah started by wanting to deploy a simple web app, but first she needed to update her Docker configuration, which required upgrading her local environment, which meant backing up her files, which led to organizing her entire project structure—three hours later, she was still yak shaving instead of deploying.