A while back Hillel Wayne did a talk (whose name I forget) on what empirical evidence on software quality actually says.

As I recall, he concluded that there’s really no support for then-popular ideas like short functions, reducing cyclomatic complexity, avoiding explicit branch statements and loops, or TDD. (Tests yes, just not TDD.)

He made a pretty strong case that only two principles are particularly robust. One was that limiting code volume is good. The other is that working people too hard is bad.

This talk.

What We Know We Don’t Know • Hillel Wayne. (2019, April 28). Hillel Wayne. https://www.hillelwayne.com/talks/what-we-know-we-dont-know/