Six Years In: Best Practices That Actually Stuck
A short list of habits I kept after six years of shipping industrial and web software, and a few I had to unlearn.
The habits that stuck
- Write the README before the code. If I can't describe the thing clearly, I don't understand it yet.
- One-line commit subjects, body only when the "why" isn't obvious. The PR description is the right place for narrative.
- Delete aggressively. Dead code always looks load-bearing until you remove it.
- Talk to the domain expert at least once a week. On the plant floor, every week.
The habits I had to unlearn
- Chasing coverage numbers. 100% coverage on a service that has no integration tests is theater.
- Premature abstraction. Three similar lines are almost always fine.
- Shipping "just in case" features. They cost maintenance forever and no one uses them.
What six years taught me
The best engineers I have worked with are ruthless about scope and generous about context. They say no to the tenth feature and yes to the fifteenth conversation with operations. I am still trying to be more like them.
Your craft improves faster in plant-floor conversations than in any book you will read about software.
