Hacker Laws

Wadler's Law

Wadler's Law on wiki.haskell.org

In any language design, the total time spent discussing a feature in this list is proportional to two raised to the power of its position.

  1. Semantics
  2. Syntax
  3. Lexical syntax
  4. Lexical syntax of comments

(In short, for every hour spent on semantics, 8 hours will be spent on the syntax of comments).

Similar to The Law of Triviality, Wadler's Law states what when designing a language, the amount of time spent on language structures is disproportionately high in comparison to the importance of those features.

See also: