Shipping quickly beats the best strategy
- Listen, build, ship, iterate. Always in that order.
- Product adoption matters more than the amount of code written.
- A small team that ships beats a large one that plans.
- Small teams often ship more than large ones.
Complexity is the enemy
- If you need a diagram to explain the architecture to a junior engineer, it is probably too complex.
- The easiest code to maintain is the code that does not exist.
- Premature abstraction is worse than repetition.
- Every dependency carries a hidden maintenance cost.
Quality from day one
- Clean code is not a luxury; it is a short-term investment.
- Writing tests is not optional in critical systems.
- “We will fix it later” almost never arrives.
- Continuous refactoring prevents heroic refactoring.
Communication is the work
- Clear writing is clear thinking.
- Misaligned expectations create pain.
- Document decisions, not just code.
- Anticipate objections before proposing a solution.
Automate everything you can
- If you do it more than twice, it deserves a script.
- Manual deployments are a risk, not a tradition.
- Generative AI is a tool, not a threat.
- The best automation is the one the user barely notices.
Never stop learning
- Improve by 1% every day and the compound result is enormous.
- Consistency beats natural talent.
- Read other people’s code. Read books. Read documentation.
- Strong opinions should be held with flexibility.
Work can be your hobby
- Your best work appears when you follow your curiosity.
- Passion plus clear boundaries works better than mythical “balance”.
- That does not mean you cannot have other hobbies.