7 Software Development Principles That Should Be Embraced Daily

“KISS,” “DRY”, “YAGNI,” and more

Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash

Being a good programmer is a mix of skills and some common sense. It is all about being pragmatic and knowing what is the solution that fits better your problem. When facing a challenge, there are some software principles that will guide you in choosing the most correct approach.

Those are a set of guidelines every developer should know and revisit from time to time. Think about them as your secret sauce when programming.

Consistently applying those principles will make your transition from mid to senior software engineer easier. You may find out that (probably) you are applying some of them intuitively.

There are a lot of principles. We will just focus on the seven most important ones. Embracing these will help you improve and become a better programmer.

1. You Aren’t Gonna Need It — YAGNI

It’s simple and self-explanatory — but not everybody follows it. When adding code, make sure it’s needed right away. Don’t leave code hanging because you think it might be useful later on.

This applies when doing refactoring. If you refactor a method/class/file, you shouldn’t be reluctant to remove any methods that are…