Conway's Law

<project, humour> The rule that the organisation of the software and the organisation of the software team will be congruent; originally stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler".

Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker, wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called SAVE.

The name "SAVE" didn't stand for anything; it was just that you lost fewer card decks and listings because they all had SAVE written on them.

[Jargon File]

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CONVERT convert.f90 Convex Computer Corporation convex hull Conway, John Horton	gang bang SAVE	Conway's Life cooC cooccurrence matrix cookbook cooked mode