A field guide to building software that remains understandable, adaptable, and dependable long after its first release.
6 chapters · 38 rules
Distilled from a decade of building and maintaining production systems, these rules favour clarity and longevity over cleverness. Each is short enough to remember and reasoned enough to defend.
Engineers past their first year who want principles, not prescriptions — and teams looking for a shared standard they can point to in a review.
Rewrote the failure-handling chapter and added six rules on observability. Split Complexity from Change.
Added Write for the Next Developer. Clarified inheritance guidance after reader corrections.
Initial publication — 30 rules across four chapters.
“The reasoning behind each rule is what makes this stick. A genuine reference.”
“The reasoning sections are what set this apart. Every rule tells you when to break it.”
“We remixed three chapters into our internal handbook. The edition history made that trivial.”
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