Hofstadter's law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hofstadter's Law is a self-referencing time-related adage, coined by Douglas Hofstadter and named after himself.

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

—Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid^[1]

Hofstadter's Law was a part of Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 magnum opus Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It is often cited among programmers, especially in discussions of techniques to improve productivity, such as The Mythical Man-Month or Extreme Programming.

[edit] See also

• Parkinson's Law
• Optimism bias
• Planning fallacy
• Reference class forecasting
• List of eponymous laws

[edit] References

1. ^ Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. 20th anniversary ed., 1999, p. 152. ISBN 0-465-02656-7

This computer science article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.