A selection of software engineering practices, from notes I took at an XTC meetup many years ago. They have survived the test of time very well. Practices change much slower than tools, and are typically a better investment.

• Keep your methods short.
• System should always be running – this means you need either live upgrades or a cluster.
• Always have a goal in mind – visible task. For example keep you current task on an index card stuck to the side of your monitor.
• Code should express intent – self documenting code.
• Verbose test names – Think of test methods names as a sentence.
• The code is the design.
• Do not duplicate code, effort, anything.
• Twice is a smell, three times is a pattern.
• No broken windows. Fight entropy.
• Check everything into source control. Tools, libraries, documentation, everything.
• Separate things that change.
• Write pseudo code first and keep it as comments if it is still useful. OR, write pseudo code as methods and then flesh out.
• Code for the common case – focus on building functionality that is the most useful first. 80% value for 20% effort.
• Text is king.
• Have courage – don’t talk instead of doing – resolve design debates by implementing the alternatives.
• Take a break.
• Proceed in small steps / small iterations.
• Understand the domain. Better domain understanding lowers communication cost and means you can use vaguer specifications.
• Make it work, then make it right, then make it fast.
• Strive for a coherent abstraction – does each ‘unit’ fit together.
• Open black boxes – look into bits of legacy systems you don’t know.
• Automate.
• Avoid ‘Manager’ objects – instead make them more specific: Retriever, Calculator, Finder, etc.
• Think in terms of interfaces, of behaviour, not of data.
• No magic: No wizards.