I just came across an old e-mail I sent back in 2010. The tooling may have changed a bit, but the ideas still hold true:

  1. Thou shalt not break the build.

1a. If thoust breakith the build, thoust better bloody well fix the build.

1b. If thoust not fixith the build, I will come after ye with Matilda.

1c. Thou does not want to find out what Matilda is.

  1. Thou shalt not bypass the build process.

(no good ever comes of it, and it *never* saves time in the long run)

  1. Thou shalt start, stop and resolve thy JIRA tickets in a timely manner.
  1. Thou shalt not put up front-end code that hath not passed the HTML/XHTML validator.
  1. Thou shalt not put CSS or Javascript inline.

5a. Evar.

  1. Thou shalt not reinvent the wheel.

6a. Even if your reinvented wheel floats in the air. Some poor bugger has to maintain it.

  1. Thou shalt put thy faith (and all new projects) into the Holy Trinity (Subversion, CruiseControl.NET, JIRA).

7a. Without exception.

7b. Unless you’ve got a very, *very*, *VERY* persuasive argument you can communicate effectively whilst being nibbled alive by rabid gerbils.

  1. Thou shalt commit thy code (at least) daily.
  1. Thou shalt not worship false backup files (.bak, _old, .bak.old).

9a. Thou shalt verily never commit backup files, data files or SVN metadata files into thine repository.

9b. Because I then have to spend two hours picking them back out. And that really peeves me off (see 7b for suitable punishment).

  1. If in doubt, thy should ask. It’s good to talk[TM]

If in doubt remember the eleventh commandment:

  1. Code as if the next guy to maintain your code is a homicidal maniac who knows where you live.

I admit plagiarism for number 11.