Maxim Hierarchy

This is one attempt to categorise maxims.

Design & implementation

All those maxims related to the system itself.

Separate and group system parts rationally

Class & Package Level

This is a rather large block... are there any overarching rules that can group these components...

Data & Behaviour

• Avoid downcasting
• Common reuse principle
• Model the real world
• Avoid equals
• Behavioral completeness
• Single responsibility principle
• Separation of concerns
• Dependency injection
• Encapsulate that which varies
• Encapsulation is hierarchical
• Encapsulation boundary

Hide Stuff

• Fat interfaces
• Hide your decisions
• Information hiding
• Tell, Don't Ask
• Don't expose mutable attributes

Inheritance

• Dependency inversion principle
• Favor composition over inheritance
• Avoid inheritance for implementation
• Don't burn your base class
• Law of leaky abstractions
• Liskov substitution principle

Method Level

• Avoid side effects
• Command query separation

Avoid unnecessary complexity

• Don't repeat yourself
• Do the simplest thing that could possibly work
• You ain't gonna need it
• Software reuse
• Keep it simple
• Named constants
• Goto considered harmful
• Common closure principle
• Establishing priorities
• Design by contract - The placement of this maxim is difficult

Minimise connections

• Acyclic dependencies principle
• Coupling and cohesion
• Impedance mismatch
• Getters and setters

Process & Organisation

All the maxims related to the development processes and management of the development team.

OO Developers are not perfect

• Big design up front
• Software crisis

Unsorted

All those maxims that have not been applied to a category...

• Interface segregation principle
• Keep accessors and mutators separate
• Law of Demeter
• No concrete base classes
• No silver bullet
• One responsibility rule
• Open closed principle
• Once and only once
• Premature optimization
• Program to the interface not the implementation
• Reuse release equivalence principle
• Single choice principle
• Stable abstractions principle
• Stable dependencies principle