This talk walks through a 13-point list of recommendations (0 through 12) that can be applied out-of-the-box to reduce code size and complexity, acting as both guidelines for new code and indicators for refactoring.

This short list has no ambition to be all that you needed to know about design (but were afraid to ask), but it does offer an easily memorable and easily practised set of guidelines that offer the greatest immediate return on investment. The recommendations presented are structured as themes and are not necessarily specific to programming language, although concrete examples include matters of class interface and hierarchy design, expression of control flow and logic, and other issues ranging from the apparently minor to the unavoidably major.