The Apex Ten Commandments (in Writing)

For anyone (like me) who couldn't find the slides to The Apex Ten Commandments recording referenced on the Architect Core Resources page, here's the written list:

1. Thou shalt not put queries in for loops
2. Thou shalt not put DML in for loops
3. Thou shalt have a happy balance between clicks & code
4. Thou shalt only put one trigger per object
5. Thou shalt not put code in triggers other than calling methods and managing execution order
6. Thou shalt utilize maps for queries wherever possible
7. Thou shalt make use of relationships to reduce queries wherever possible
8. Thou shalt aim for 100% test coverage
9. Thou shalt write meaningful and useful tests
10. Thou shalt limit future calls and use asynchronous code where possible

And I just have a couple of comments to add for color.

Comments on #7

I haven't tested this hypothesis yet, but... does this commandment still hold with large data volumes? Especially in the context of batch Apex? One certainty is that executing a single query like this is convenient for the developer. But when the query would return thousands of records that reference a small set of parent records, perhaps at larger data volumes a more efficient approach would be to split the query and leverage commandment #6 instead.

Comments on #10

The future annotation is slowly become obsolete with the introduction of the Queuable interface in Winter '15, although general guidelines for designing asynchronous automation still hold true.