Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 12:15:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Art S. Kagel" <kagel AT ns1 DOT bloomberg DOT com>
To: Josh Eckstein <kwe1 AT flash DOT net>
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Check out my demo game!
In-Reply-To: <199708092247.RAA29366@endeavor.flash.net>
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On Sat, 9 Aug 1997, Josh Eckstein wrote:

> >Kagel's Second Law of Programming:
> >
> >Programmers are lazy, and should be.  If one keeps this present in
> >mind then:
> >1) one can always understand why a particular piece of code was
> >  written a particular way,
> >2) one will always write good, clean, simple code, and
> >3) one will diligently avoid writing code that is already available
> >  elsewhere.
> 
> Where are the other laws of programming?

Kagel's First law of Programming (Top Secret):

Principle 1) Never let the users know how EASY this job is at the
mechanical level.

Principle 2) Never let the users know how HARD this job is at the
conceptual level.  

(N.B. - Since they think that the nature of 1 & 2 are reversed and
cannot be convinced that 2 is true they will probably not believe you
anyway!)

Principle 3) The mark of a good programmer is to make it look like one
has done something hard easily, otherwise the users will think that
they can do it better themselves.  Since they already believe
(falsely) that the concepts are simple (and you cannot convince them
otherwise, I used to try) they must NEVER suspect that the mechanics
are straight forward.  This is the only thing keeping users from
programming and SCREWING everything up!

(Major note: Object oriented languages many save us from this problem
forever since they make the mechanics as difficult as the concepts!)

Art S. Kagel, kagel AT bloomberg DOT com