Eliot Miranda Eliot Miranda, Author of the Cog and BrouHaHa Smalltalk VMs. Ex tech lead for VisualWorks Smalltalk ('99 - '06). Updated Dec 6
I’m not qualified to answer this question; I’m a very experienced and quite strong programmer but I’ve not studied the development and maintenance of large programs, I’ve not managed teams, and I’ve not invented a programming methodology. That said, my experience tells me that the following (none of which are mine) are the rules to live by
When possible, use a simple approach. Adapting Einstein, programs should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. In the absence of perfect optimizers this principle may have to be violated if one is producing a system whose performance is critical and which is run many more times than it is written (such as in an optimizer).