Prefer using existing standards instead of a new one. If a standard does not fulfill ones need, one can use a restricted version of the standard: only a part of the standard is used, which in turn allows one to add new functionality to the standard.

The complexity of project should be planned. If the project's complexity becomes greater than planned, it may be a indicator that the project needs to be simplified. This can be done by splitting the project into multiple ones.

Minimize the amount of complexity. Minimize the set of required programming language features. The set of actually used programming features is not important.

General code is easier to manage than domain specific functions as domain specific functions tend to grow in complexity over time. It is easier to limit the maximum complexity of general code, because its easier to exactly define the content of such a function. , that it relies on predefined interfaces, which may The downside of general code is, that it may provide more functionality than currently needed, which may require more code than strictly needed. This can be omitted by not implementing not used parts of the general code. There are 2 ways to do this: one can call a function with some arguments set to null, which are not valid, but are not used by the function because the other arguments are have certain values. Another way is to explicitly throw an exception, if a not implemented part is used. In this case it is best to create a dedicated exception class for this in order unambiguous mark unfinished code parts. Both methods create an exception, if an unfinished part of a code is executed.