Gall's law
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Complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked.
Source status: Source not yet verified by the archive.
Complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked.
Technology amplifies both capability and the cost of failure. Laws in this category reflect decades of experience with projects that overrun, systems that break at scale, and tools that behave in unexpected ways.
Working complex systems usually grow from smaller working systems; designing all complexity at once leaves fewer validated assumptions.
Practical example: Launch a reliable single-region service before adding multi-region failover and global routing.
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