Zawinski's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.

[raiderrobert@mastodon.social]

Zawinski's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

This law explains why:
- Text editors become IDEs
- Build tools become deployment platforms
- Chat apps become workflow management systems
- Simple utilities become Swiss Army knives

The pattern is feature creep driven by user requests and competitive pressure. The challenge is knowing when to say no to expansion.

[argonaut@bonn.social]

@raiderrobert #nethack very early gained a monster called a "mail daemon". If you had new mail, it would appear in the door to the room you were in, run to you (within your timeslot, so not interference by you) and throw a scroll of mail to you. If you read that scroll, the mail program would be started.
originally, it's symbol was 2 (old people can guess why), but was changed to & like other daemons in a later version.