Eric S. Raymond personal blog
Zawinski's Law
“ Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can. ” Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the “ Law of Software Envelopment ”) to express his belief that all truly useful programs experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and…
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Software EngineeringHistory & Retro Computing2009
Cited in comments
Linked from 36 Hacker News comments by 36 different people, from Apr 2009 to Jun 2026.
Most recent:
- robotresearcher · Jun 11, 2026
- theshrike79 · Apr 25, 2026
- btown · Feb 21, 2025
- faresahmed · Sep 15, 2024
- salawat · Sep 22, 2023
- ec109685 · Feb 7, 2023
