Strunk and White’s Ele­ments of Style is one of the most pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial writ­ing guides avail­able. By replac­ing a few key words, it can be used as a text on pro­gram­ming style and the craft of soft­ware.

2.12. Choose a suit­able design and hold to it.

A basic struc­tural design under­lies every kind of writ­ing pro­gram­ming. Writ­ers Pro­gram­mers will in part fol­low this design, in part devi­ate from it, accord­ing to their skills, their needs, and the unex­pected events that accom­pany the act of com­po­si­tion. Writ­ing Pro­gram­ming, to be effec­tive, must fol­low closely the thoughts of the writer pro­gram­mer, but not nec­es­sar­ily in the order in which those thoughts occur. This calls for a scheme of pro­ce­dure… in most cases, plan­ning must be a delib­er­ate pre­clude to writ­ing pro­gram­ming. The first prin­ci­ple of com­po­si­tion soft­ware devel­op­ment, there­fore, is to fore­see or deter­mine the shape of what is to come and pur­sue that shape.

via Kot­tke