Meanings
- humorouscomputingA tongue-in-cheek "law" of software development stating that "any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript."
This was later codified in a more formal W3C document, The Rule of Least Power. I propose a corollary to this rule, which in the spirit of recent memes, I'll call Atwood's Law: any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.
2007 July 17, Jeff Atwood, “The Principle of Least Power”, in Coding Horror, archived from the original on 07 Feb 20241 more example
Since that time, web developers have produced nearly every type of application, including full-blown, cloud-based office suites (see Zoho.com), social APIs like Facebook's JavaScript SDK, and even graphically intensive video games. ¶ All of this is serving to prove Atwood's Law (http://bit.ly/1pFCjtR): "Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript."
2014, Eric Elliott, Programming JavaScript Applications, Sebastopol, C.A.: O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 2
Origin
Coined by American software developer, author, blogger and entrepreneur Jeff Atwood in 2007 (see quotation below).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Atwood's Law. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Atwood's%20Law
“Atwood's Law.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Atwood's%20Law. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Atwood's Law,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Atwood's%20Law.
Source: Atwood's Law on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.