In my experience, you either have encapsulation and abstraction or you have neither. There is no middle ground.

It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free.

It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.

A brute force solution that works is better than an elegant solution that doesn't work.

Good visual layout shows the logical structure of a program.

Good code is its own best documentation. As you're about to add a comment, ask yourself, "How can I improve the code so that this comment isn't needed?" Improve the code and then document it to make it even clearer.

The primary purpose of software estimation is not to predict a project's outcome; it is to determine whether a project's targets are realistic enough to allow the project to be controlled to meet them.