Ninety-Ninety Rule: n. "The first 90% of the code accounts for
the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the
code accounts for the other 90% of the development time."
Attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs, and popularized by Jon
Bentley's September 1985 "Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" column in
"Communications of the ACM". It was there called the "Rule of
Credibility", a name which seems not to have stuck. Other maxims in
the same vein include the law attributed to the early British
computer scientist Douglas Hartree: "The time from now until the
completion of the project tends to become constant."
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