Practices from Code That Fits in Your Head

Code That Fits in Your Head by Mark Seemann includes over two dozen specific practices one can follow to help write better software. A summary of these practices is shown below. It's an excellent book with many heuristics and tips for writing better software while always ensuring the current context is simple enough for the developer to reason about.

Practices from Code That Fits in Your Head

1. The 50/72 Rule
2. The 80/24 Rule
3. Arrange Act Assert
4. Bisection
5. Checklist for New Code Base
6. CQS
7. Count the Variables
8. Cyclomatic Complexity Limit
9. Decorators for Cross-Cutting Concerns
10. Devil's Advocate
11. Feature Flag
12. Functional Core, Imperative Shell
13. Hierarchy of Communication
14. Justify Exceptions from the Rule
15. Parse, Don't Validate
16. Postel's Law
17. Red, Green, Refactor
18. Regularly Update Dependencies
19. Reproduce Defects as Tests
20. Review Code
21. Semantic Versioning
22. Separate Refactoring of Test and Production Code
23. Slice (vertical)
24. Strangler (fig)
25. Threat Model
26. Transformation Priority Premise
27. (X) Driven Development
28. X Out the Names

References

• Code That Fits in Your Head (Mark Seeman)