These are my programming commandments. They’re not a treasure map that guarantees success, but they’re a solid compass that keeps me heading in the right direction. Over time, I’ve found that sticking to these makes my code easier to maintain, reason about, and extend. So here they are:
Global state is that one friend who always crashes on your couch and messes up your stuff. Keep it local whenever possible. Your future self (and your teammates) will thank you.
Mutability leads to spooky action at a distance. If something shouldn’t change, don’t let it. Immutable data is predictable, safe, and easier to debug.
Inheritance can be a trap. Before you create another subclass, ask yourself: could this be done with composition instead? Most of the time, the answer is yes.
Pure functions are little islands of sanity in an ocean of side effects. They take input, return output, and don’t mess with the world in between.
Validating says, “This input is wrong.” Parsing says, “Let’s turn this into something useful.” The latter is way more helpful.
Relying on remote services slows you down. If you can develop, test, or prototype locally, do it.
If you’ve done it twice, script it. If you’ve done it three times, make it a proper tool. Your time is too valuable for manual drudgery.
Tests are like seatbelts: annoying until you need them. Write them before you regret not having them.
Code is read way more often than it’s written. Make it clear, make it simple, and make it make sense.
That feature you’re “pretty sure” you’ll need later? You probably won’t. Solve today’s problems today.
Fast code is good, but maintainable code is better. Optimize when it actually matters.
Not all duplication is bad. Only share code when changing one part means you must change the other.
If you see a pattern once, ignore it. Twice? Keep an eye on it. Three times? Now it’s time to refactor.
Bad code gets written. The trick is to not leave it bad. Refactoring a little at a time prevents big rewrites later.
Silent failures are the worst. If something breaks, scream about it—log it, throw an error, do something! Debugging ghosts is not fun.
