One Rule to Rule Them All
summary
Argues that the single guiding rule is to make it easier to change: correctness is fleeting because requirements and environments accelerate change, so DRY, SRP, tests, VCS and pairing are all special cases of that. Shows a concrete tax example evolving from inline magic number to a rule-driven function and spreadsheet-driven data, and reports fewer surprises after removing heavyweight third‑party libs and writing small parsers (string scanner, recursive‑descent). Prescribes a repeatable habit: write a one‑sentence summary before changing, estimate effort, record actual effort and observations to train intuition, and cut out dependencies where they constrain future change.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:40Agile software development
- 3:47Classic waterfall
- 5:26Theorem proving
- 6:24Correct code
- 9:01Dave's postulate No. 1
- 10:28Change
- 13:21Easy to change
- 14:40How?
- 20:57Dave's postulate No. 2
- 26:35Building intuition
- 30:10Experience
- 34:22Handwrite on paper
- 37:36Make it easier to change
- 38:33Make it fun
- 39:00Q&A
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