Raw capture — raw/lindy-effect.md
url: https://lawsofsoftwareengineering.com/laws/lindy-effect/ title: The Lindy Effect author: Dr. Milan Milanović date_fetched: 2026-07-08 date_published: 2026-04-15
Author: Dr. Milan Milanović Site: Laws of Software Engineering Last updated: April 15, 2026 Category: Decisions (Mid-Level) Reading time: 2 min
The longer something has been in use, the more likely it is to continue being used.
The principle flips conventional aging intuition: living things lose life expectancy as they age, but technologies, tools, and concepts tend to gain longevity the longer they've already survived. Time acts as a filtering mechanism—flawed, fragile, or irrelevant things disappear, while what endures is typically high-quality and valuable.
Developers are advised to "invest in timeless skills and proven fundamentals" such as algorithms, core languages, and design principles rather than chasing fleeting frameworks. When evaluating technology choices, the author recommends applying the Lindy Effect as a heuristic: "Things that have been around for some time stick around longer in the future."
This serves as a check against "shiny object syndrome," with the observation that most innovations "reinvent ideas of the past" and that "truly fundamental ideas in software change slowly."
COBOL (1959) — over 60 years old, still running much of the world's finance and government infrastructure. The article notes an estimate that "70-80% of all global financial transactions" depend on COBOL in banking and mainframe systems.
JavaScript frameworks — Many (AngularJS, Ember.js, Knockout.js) rose and fell within a decade, while "the underlying language and browser APIs have been around for over 25 years and will continue."
SQL vs. cutting-edge frameworks — The Lindy approach favors SQL (1970s) as remaining "highly relevant today and will remain so."
The term was coined in 1964 by journalist Albert Goldman, named after Lindy's Delicatessen in New York City. Comedians there observed that a Broadway show's past longevity predicted its future run: if a show lasted X weeks, it could be expected to run another X weeks.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the concept in The Black Swan (2007) and Antifragile (2012), coining the name "Lindy Effect" to describe the aging of non-perishable things like "books, ideas, technologies, or traditions."
| Law | Category | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Hyrum's Law | Architecture | "all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody" |
| Postel's Law | Quality | "Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others" |
| The Hype Cycle & Amara's Law | Decisions | Overestimating short-term tech effects, underestimating long-term impact |
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0