Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design (spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html) are one of the most useful pieces of wisdom for any engineering discipline, especially software engineering.
Here are a few that have been very helpful to me 👇
Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.
To design a spacecraft right takes an infinite amount of effort. This is why it's a good idea to design them to operate when some things are wrong .
In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.
Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.
A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.
(Patton's Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.