I like to generalize it to &quot;Understand and consistently apply the concepts and good practices of your chosen field&quot;.<p>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.<p>The issue I have with the article myself is that it over-promises in the title and under-delivers in the body.<p>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.<p>Calling this &quot;golden rules&quot; seems dishonest. &quot;My rules for becoming a better programmer&quot; would be a more accurate, albeit more boring title.