Principles Without Dogma
Six engineering principles - KISS, YAGNI, DRY, AHA, SoC, and SOLID - without the cult. On one running example (an online-store order calculation) you see where a rule saves the code and where it turns into new complexity. A principle is useful while it helps you think.
"Principles Without Dogma" breaks down six engineering tools: KISS, YAGNI, DRY, AHA, SoC, and SOLID. Not as a code of rules to obey, but as ways to check a decision: each answers its own question, and the right answer depends on context. The book's main idea is simple - a principle is useful while it helps you think; when it replaces thinking, dogma begins.
Everything is shown on one running example - an online-store order calculation. The function starts simple, evolves under real changes (marketing changes discounts, logistics changes delivery, finance changes rounding), and reveals each principle in turn. We cover them not alphabetically but in order of application: first the ones that keep a system from premature growth, then the ones that draw boundaries once growth has arrived.
The definitions are checked against the principles' authors' own work, not paraphrases - links at the end of the book. There's no year in the title on purpose: unlike books about fast-moving technology, these principles are timeless.