Rules for Software Development (some old, some new; some borrowed, some …)

• You can’t do everything.
• You won’t think of everything! - accept that bugs will exist and you will create software that can always be improved.
• Pretending to know what you are doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, accept that you know what you are doing even if you don’t and do it! - Seth Godin
• Don’t pay attention to what others are doing, unless your goal is to produce the same. – you can’t make anything new by worrying what the competition, you coworkers, the people down the hall, … are doing
• The law of diminishing returns applies to features as well as commodities, treat your features as such and choose wisely how many you are willing to implement.
• Ship on time! – be honest everything else pales in comparison
• There is no permanent record, because there is no such thing as permanent! You have chosen a profession where your final product is written on erasable disks, take advantage of this fact often.
• Keep it as simple as possible without being too simple. How many people do you know actually used the VCR+ record feature before the DVR? It required a book, a code, and the dreaded VCR instruction manual, remember those? Now how many people record shows using a DVR? Do you even know what the instruction manual looks like?
• Don’t make a backup plan, remember failure is not an option, learn from your mistakes and move forward. If your backup plan is that great why aren’t you doing that.
• That said, backup your work often
• To err is human, to forgive is good programming – do better than try to think of everything that could go wrong, grab a few people that have no knowledge
• Learn constantly, but choose what you learn wisely – if you want to stay competitive you can not rest, you have choose a field where technology advances reduce development time everyday – those willing to brace the changes will succeed those stuck in the ‘old’, ‘proven’, or ‘traditional’ way will eventually be obsolete.
• Ask Why!

That’s it feel free to add your own in the form of a comment.