I like to generalize it to "Understand and consistently apply the concepts and good practices of your chosen field". This requires you to find out what good pr

I like to generalize it to "Understand and consistently apply the concepts and good practices of your chosen field". This requires you to find out what good practices are, understanding why they are good practices and then working on making them a habit so they reliably show up in your work. The issue I have with the article myself is that it over-promises in the title and under-delivers in the body. The rules are drawn at random from things that make good sense, with no attention to order in level, area, or importance. DRY is a pattern, not commenting code is an anti-pattern, and not interrupting co-workers is workplace etiquette. Some rules are obvious to the intermediate [DRY, no magic numbers], whilst others are confusing to the beginner [eliminating dependencies to make code easier to test]. This makes the list useful for neither. Calling this "golden rules" seems dishonest. "My rules for becoming a better programmer" would be a more accurate, albeit more boring title.