Software engineering has laws. Most teams relearn them the hard way.
lose_law is a tiny terminal command that prints one random Law of Software Engineering. The laws come from lawsofsoftwareengineering.com, a collection of principles and patterns that shape systems, teams, and decisions.
Install
Needs jq. curl is used for install and on the first run.
mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin" && curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/theElandor/lose_law/main/bin/lose.sh -o "$HOME/.local/bin/lose_law" && chmod +x "$HOME/.local/bin/lose_law"
Run it manually with:
lose_law
If you want a random law every time you open a new shell, add one of these snippets to your shell startup file.
Show On Shell Startup
Bash
printf '\nexport PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"\ncommand -v lose_law >/dev/null 2>&1 && lose_law\n' >> "$HOME/.bashrc" && . "$HOME/.bashrc"
Zsh
printf '\nexport PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"\ncommand -v lose_law >/dev/null 2>&1 && lose_law\n' >> "$HOME/.zshrc" && . "$HOME/.zshrc"
Fish
printf '\nfish_add_path "$HOME/.local/bin"\ncommand -q lose_law; and lose_law\n' >> "$HOME/.config/fish/config.fish"; source "$HOME/.config/fish/config.fish"
Other POSIX Shells
printf '\nexport PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"\ncommand -v lose_law >/dev/null 2>&1 && lose_law\n' >> "$HOME/.profile" && . "$HOME/.profile"
What Happens
On first run, lose_law downloads the JSON feed to ~/.config/lose/laws.json. After that, each run prints one random law.
Credit
Special thanks to Laws of Software Engineering.