Programs, life cycles, and laws of software evolution

Lehman, M. M. (1980). Programs, life cycles, and laws of software evolution. Proceedings of the IEEE, 68(9), 1060-1076.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1980

DOI

10.1109/proc.1980.11805

Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/PROC.1980.11805

Cited from

communication_media_studies, engineering_design, marine_science

Cited by

4 citations across 4 artifacts.

Primes

• Compatibility
  • This reasoning clarifies trade-offs before decisions are made—an analytical move Lehman (1980) made central to his laws of software evolution, where continuing change requires explicit reasoning about what compatibility guarantees survive each release.
• Legacy Integration
  • Legacy integration is not identical to continuity vs. rupture, the tension that describes whether systems maintain or break from their past, a tension Lehman (1980) formalized in his laws of software evolution where continuous change is the default condition of operating systems.
• Maintenance
  • In each case, maintenance work slows the rate of decay, requires ongoing energy input, and succeeds by maintaining a stable state rather than producing a new outcome.
• Temporal Decay and Degradation
  • Degradation curves from chemistry and materials science inform predictions of data obsolescence, format decay, and the timing of system refreshes.

Verification

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