Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology

CORE DEFINITION

A software engineering maxim, commonly attributed to Bruce Lubarsky and cited in Gerald Weinberg's writing on systems thinking. Its core proposition is that a complex system always contains at least one undetected defect: no amount of testing establishes its absence, only the failure to find one so far. The key constraint is that the law is not an argument against testing but against the target of testing. It implies that effort should be balanced between reducing defects and increasing the system's capacity to detect, contain, and recover from the ones that remain.