1. mesure. mesure time before optimizing.
  2. simplest thing first. "When in doubt, use brute force."
  3. data dominates. use good data structures

Mike Gancarz: The UNIX Philosophy

  1. Small is beautiful
  2. Make each program do one thing well.
  3. Build a prototype as soon as possible.
  4. Choose portability over efficiency
  5. Store data in (flat text files.) simplest form
  6. Use software leverage to your advantage, reuse existing solutions
  7. Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.
  8. Avoid captive user interfaces
  9. Make every program a filter, one input, one output

Eric S. Raymond, in his book The Art of Unix Programming[4], summarizes the Unix philosophy as the widely-used KISS Principle of "Keep it Simple, Stupid" [5]. He also provides a series of design rules:

  1. Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
  2. Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
  3. Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.
  4. Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
  5. Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.
  6. Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.
  7. Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.
  8. Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.
  9. Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust.[6]
  10. Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
  11. Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.
  12. Rule of Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
  13. Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.
  14. Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.
  15. Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.
  16. Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for "one true way".
  17. Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.