Top 10 list

Remember the "divide and conquer" principle

If the problem you're looking at is too confusing, try to imagine what the basic operation of the program would be, given the existence of a magic "piece" that handles the hard parts. That "piece" is an object—write the code that uses the object, then look at the object and encapsulate its hard parts into other objects, and so on. This should ensure that you don't end up with programming redundancies, i.e. writing the same piece of application logic multiple times.

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Next: #4 - Separate the class creator from the class user (client programmer)

Elegance always pays off	Use bare bones methodology
First make it work, then make it fast	Automate everything
Remember the "divide and conquer" principle	Write test code early
Separate the class creator from the class user (client programmer)	Get abstract
Name classes intelligently	An indirection should have a meaning