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I Will Reject Your Pull Request If You Violate These Design Principles
4 Principles for Clean Code That Won’t Get Your PR Rejected
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After reviewing hundreds of PRs and rejecting a good bunch, I went hunting for universal rules to prevent code complexity.
Like most developers, this has been a learning journey — I’ve written my share of messy modules too. But understanding core design principles could have saved me from costly mistakes.
Here’s the fundamental truth: Good software design minimizes complexity. But to fight complexity, we first need to understand our enemy.
Complexity: The Enemy of Software Systems
To design clean modules, we first need to understand complexity’s nature.
Complexity doesn’t emerge from a single bad decision. Instead, it grows gradually over time — like a slow-spreading disease — unless we actively fight against it.
In software development, complexity is a natural byproduct that accumulates when left unchecked. Just as gardeners regularly prune plants to prevent overgrowth, we must continually refactor and simplify our code to keep complexity at bay.