Rules I live by

I think may be bad at following them.

• Don't be evil.

• An open source license is almost always the right choice.
• If you use someone else's work, they always deserve a credit.
• Hyperlinks shouldn't be broken.
• Being consistent is better than being right at the cost of rewriting everything 5 times over.

• Accessibility is not optional.
• Low cognitive load is more important than features or lack of them.
• Sane defaults are more important than configurability.
• If a feature exists, it should be discoverable.

• Correctness is more important than speed.
• Don't be clever. Be dumb and straightforward instead.
• Write everything in a way that it can be read out loud and make sense to a normal person.
• The most important stuff should go first. Don't shove into the end of the file.

• Use technical limitations to your advantage.
• Avoid dependencies as much as possible.
• Avoid language extensions when possible.
• When using a compiler or a lint, use the strictest settings available.

• If something deserves a name, give it one. Don't leave people guessing.
• Get straight to the point and don't overdescribe things.
• Avoid generic words like "manager" and "controller" unless it's absolutely necessary.
• Don't use abbreviations and don't skip letters unless it's a frequently used keyword.

• Proper documentation is always better than a comment.
• Comments should describe why your code does something, not what or how. If you feel the need to explain that, write better code instead.
• Don't use comments to explain the meaning of a value. Use variables for that instead.
• Don't use comments to separate code into blocks. Use functions for that instead.

• Indentation is 4 spaces with only 2 languages being the exception:
  • YAML uses 2 spaces.
  • Make uses tabs.
• You don't need more than 80 columns of text. If you do, there's probably a better way to do it.
• Be wary of trailing whitespace.
• Make sure files end with a line break, just like they do on Unix.