A note before we begin

This is a small book of working principles, gathered over the years from people who make things — software, mostly, but the ideas don’t stay there. They drift into letters, gardens, kitchens. They are not rules. They are dispositions.

You should read it slowly. The handbook resists summary; if it could be summarised, the principles would not be principles, only conclusions. The form is the argument. Each section is short on purpose: long enough to provoke a thought, brief enough that you can hold it in your head while you walk to the kettle.

I have arranged the chapters in the order I would have wanted to encounter them, ten years ago. There is no particular merit to that order. Skip around. The book is yours, now.

What you’ll find here

• A handful of working principles, which are the parts I’d defend in argument.
• A description of a process — not the only one, but the one I keep coming back to.
• Some notes on habits, which are the smallest, most stubborn part of all of this.
• A short essay on feedback, which is the part most people get wrong.
• An apparatus at the back: a glossary for the terms I use, and a colophon for the typography enthusiast.

If you read only one chapter, read Principles. It’s the closest the book comes to a thesis.