Understand the problem you are trying to solve. Accept no substitutes. Get good with your tools (whether that be IDE, knowledge of the language, APIs etc) Te

Understand the problem you are trying to solve. Accept no substitutes. Get good with your tools (whether that be IDE, knowledge of the language, APIs etc) Test your assumptions mercilessly If you write code as though nobody will ever see it and nobody cares, the code will suck. If you write code as though for the best, most respected and most intelligent hacker(s) you know, the then code will be better. Write code as though you have an important audience that cares deeply about the result. Yes, you can sprinkle the code with comments explaining to your important audience how awesome you are and what a clever piece of coding something is. And this is actually a good thing, since these become focal points for mercilessly testing your assumptions :D