Guter und schlechter Code

• clarity and simplicity are of paramount importance
• the user of a module should never be surprised by its behaviour
• modules should be as small as possible but not smaller
• code should be reused rather than copied
• dependencies between modules should be minimal
• errors should be detected as soon as possible, ideally at compile time

(Joshua Bloch: Effective Java http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/)