pragmatic-programmer
by wondelai5 months ago2.3kApply meta-principles of software craftsmanship: DRY, orthogonality, tracer bullets, and design by contract. Use when the user mentions "best practices", "pragmatic approach", "broken windows", "tracer bullet", "software craftsmanship", "avoid technical debt", "code ownership", or "how do I become a better developer". Also trigger when evaluating build-vs-buy decisions, designing estimation approaches, or choosing between reversible and irreversible architectural decisions. Covers estimation, domain languages, and reversibility. For code-level quality, see clean-code. For refactoring techniques, see refactoring-patterns.
Install
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Open your terminal
- Mac: Press ⌘ Space, type "Terminal", press Enter
- Windows: Press Win R, type "cmd", press Enter
Paste the command above and press Enter
Use the Copy command button, then paste in your terminal (Mac: ⌘V, Windows: Ctrl V).
Restart Claude Code
Close and reopen Claude Code, or start a new session, so it picks up the new skill.
Where it lives
Related skills
brainstorming
You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.
finishing-a-development-branch
Use when implementation is complete, all tests pass, and you need to decide how to integrate the work
test-driven-development
Use when implementing any feature or bugfix, before writing implementation code
requesting-code-review
Use when completing tasks, implementing major features, or before merging to verify work meets requirements