#readwise # Law of the Instrument - Wikipedia  ## Metadata - Author: [[en.wikipedia.org]] - Full Title: Law of the Instrument - Wikipedia - URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument ## Highlights - The law of the instrument, law of the hammer,[1] Maslow's hammer (or gavel), or golden hammer[a] is a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. As Abraham Maslow said in 1966, "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."[2] The concept is attributed both to Maslow[3] and to Abraham Kaplan,[4][5] although the hammer and nail line may not be original to either of them. - The English expression "a Birmingham screwdriver", meaning a hammer, refers to the practice of using the one tool for all purposes, and predates both Kaplan and Maslow by at least a century.[6] - Maslow's hammer, popularly phrased as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" and variants thereof, is from Abraham Maslow's The Psychology of Science, published in 1966. Maslow wrote: "I remember seeing an elaborate and complicated automatic washing machine for automobiles that did a beautiful job of washing them. But it could do only that, and everything else that got into its clutches was treated as if it were an automobile to be washed. I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."[7][2] - The notion of a golden hammer, "a familiar technology or concept applied obsessively to many software problems", was introduced into information technology literature in 1998 as an anti-pattern: a programming practice to be avoided.[10] Software developer José M. Gilgado has written that the law is still relevant in the 21st century and is highly applicable to software development. Many times software developers, he observed, "tend to use the same known tools to do a completely new different project with new constraints". He blamed this on "the comfort zone state where you don't change anything to avoid risk. The problem with using the same tools every time you can is that you don't have enough arguments to make a choice because you have nothing to compare to and is limiting your knowledge." The solution is "to keep looking for the best possible choice, even if we aren't very familiar with it". This includes using a computer language with which one is unfamiliar. He noted that the product RubyMotion enables developers to "wrap" unknown computer languages in a familiar computer language and thus avoid having to learn them. But Gilgado found this approach inadvisable, because it reinforces the habit of avoiding new tools.[11]