Miscellaneous Best Practices

• Program to an interface, not an implementation
• on par with DRY and KISS is YAGNI
• You have to be constantly scanning your code and design and looking for code smells creeping in and opportunities to create abstraction that remove duplication or create greater efficiencies.
• Eclipse errors/warnings settings: This should only be your first step, additional checks are provided by Findbugs and Checkstyles
• tests: throttle test, smoke test
• One of my favorite catch phrases is, "The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference, but, in practice, there is."
• Refactor Mercilessly