The First And Main Rule Of Programming

Nothing strikes fear into a developer's heart quite like touching working code. You spend 8 hours fixing a bug, finally get it working through some unholy combination of Stack Overflow answers and pure luck, and then the PM asks "can you just add one tiny feature?"

The real programming golden rule isn't DRY or SOLID principles—it's the ancient wisdom of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" taken to religious extremes. We've all got that legacy system held together by digital duct tape that nobody dares to refactor. Sure, the documentation says "temporary solution" from 2013, but hey... it works!