Pretty good list, but a hidden assumption is that the reader works in an imperative style. For instance, recursion is the bread and butter of functional and logical programming and is just fine.

The most important advice one can give to programmers is to

  1. Know your problem domain.
  2. Think excessively deep about a conceptual model that captures the 
     relevant aspects of your problem domain.
  3. Be anal about naming your concepts. Thinking about naming oftentimes 
     feeds back to (1) and (2), forming a loop.
  4. Use a language and type system that is powerful enough to implement 
     previous points.