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Quoting American psychologist Abraham Maslow, Lee read: "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail."

This Maslow concept has become so popular among software developers that it has been dubbed the "Golden Hammer" rule, which cautions engineers with limited knowledge or training of solutions that they run the risk of using only tools they are familiar with, but that may not be the most appropriate, when they develop a new program.

Programmers should develop applications that are:

Easy to understand;  Easy to explain;  Easy to maintain; andEasy to document.

Lee said: "Put yourself as an author, how would you write something that others can easily understand and follow your thoughts? That’s how a programmer should code as well."

"Sometimes, there are bugs in your codes, or in other [software] libraries that you may have bought or downloaded that you cannot control," Lee said, underscoring the need for developers to "test early, test often".

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  Can developers then balance the commercial need to push out applications as quickly as possible, with the need to write codes that are clean?

  
  

  Lee believes they can. "A lot of people say if they don’t have quantity time, at least they have quality. That’s not true… You can’t have quality time if you don’t put in quantity time," he said. "There’s commercialization [in software development] but there’s also ‘art’ and ‘good’ codes. And you can achieve both."