We’ve all written bad code. Look at the code you wrote 2 years ago, 6 months ago, or heck even yesterday. When I do this I find that I failed to follow my 4 core development principles. That’s okay we are not perfect, but we should always be striving to accomplish something more than just getting the job done when we program. Just getting the job done in a quick manner will almost always produce poor quality code that at best doesn’t scale and at worst isn’t secure.
1. Scalable
Big apps get more lovin’. If your code isn’t scalable, it probably sucks.
What do I mean by scalability? One way to look at scalability is how easy is it to add in new features to your application. The best way to create scalable code is through planning, understanding what you want the application to be when its complete, where you want the application to be in 3 years, and what other markets/tasks you might want the application to handle down the road.