Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
From the Murphy's law canon, collected in Arthur Bloch's books among the laws of research and development alongside Cheops's Law. It lands because a project log bears it out: most weeks record effort and only a few record a result, and those few arrive when a decision, a part or a person finally does.
In practice
- A feature reads 'in progress' on six consecutive weekly reports and is then finished in two days, the week a blocking decision is finally made.
- A thesis student reads for a month with nothing on the page, then drafts a chapter over one weekend once the argument comes clear.
- Standing
- The attribution is uncertain: the line also circulates as Nienberg's Law, and no source says which Weinberg first said it. Not the same law as Weinberg's Second Law, Gerald Weinberg's woodpecker analogy.
- Subject
- Technology & Software
- Essay
- The programmers' folklore, and technology's place in society