Software development does not only follow technical principles—it also adheres to seemingly inevitable “laws.” Murphy’s Law (“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”) is well-known, but Conway’s Law (“The architecture of a system reflects the communication structures of the company.”) and Brook’s Law (“Adding more developers to a late project makes it even later.”) also shape the daily reality of software teams.

But it’s not just laws that define our work—certain lies persist just as stubbornly. “This is just a prototype, so the code doesn’t need to be clean!”—and then the “prototype” runs in production for ten years. “We’ll do the refactoring later!”—only for it to never happen.

In this talk, we analyze which “laws” developers should truly be aware of, why certain problems keep recurring, and what lessons we can draw for better software development. At the same time, we expose some of the most common lies and show how teams can protect themselves from them.