Get the latest tech news

Hash Ordering and Hyrum's Law


A Google engineer named Hyrum Wright made an observation that came to be known as Hyrum’s Law:

With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody. Because the iteration order remains stable for years at a time, users end up depending on it, despite the warning in the Javadoc. This makes sense if the data structure underlying test discovery and execution is a hash table.

Get the Android app

Or read this on Hacker News

Read more on:

Photo of law

law

Photo of Hyrum

Hyrum

Photo of Hash Ordering

Hash Ordering

Related news:

News photo

California Passes Law Protecting Consumer Brain Data

News photo

The law favors ChatGPT over humans

News photo

California's 'click to cancel' subscription bill is signed into law