Kenn’s 21 Rules for Software Development | Esoteknix

As someone who’s been an information technology professional for over three decades, I’ve learned a few things along the way. It has been said that a smart person learns from their own mistakes while a wise person learns from the mistakes of others; I have made a buttload of mistakes, so make of that what you will.

A while back, I started making notes about things I considered important advice for software development. At first, the ideas flow quickly because they were things I’d thought, experienced, or been affected by more often. The last few took months, because I wanted these to represent things I thought were really important.

So without further adieu, here are Kenn’s 21 Rules for Software Development:

1. Everything is cyclical. When it’s trendy and exciting for the entire industry to cycle in one direction, rest assured that someone is coming up with a great way of re-envisioning and re-implementing the opposite methodology. Someday everything you’re doing right now will seem archaic to someone else, and it’ll probably be within the lifespan of your career.
2. The first solution that pops into your head probably isn’t the best one, and even if it is, you won’t know until you come up with other possible solutions with which to compare it. Listen first; think about solutions…