What the Literature on Two “Laws” Can Tell About Theorization in Software Engineering?

Software engineering (SE) research and practice have resulted in many “laws” over the years and decades. By the means of a systematic literature review (SLR), the present work examines how two such laws—the Hyrum’s law and the law of leaky abstractions—have been used in existing SE research and practice to advance theorization in the discipline. According to the literature reviewing results, (1) the interest in the two laws has tended to follow their historical initiation dates, suggesting that laws may take a relatively long time to establish a footing in SE. In addition, (2) the majority of publications reviewed has supported the two laws with various arguments, but there are also refuting arguments, although only a single publication has evaluated one of the laws by the means of empirical software engineering. Finally, (3) the law of leaky abstractions has been adopted and extended to many new contexts and disciplines that go well-beyond traditional SE. With these literature reviewing results, the paper contributes to the disciplinary de- bates about theorization (or a lack thereof) in software engineering.