3.1. The Three Rules

Everybody has their own favorite rules and guidelines that they absolutely must follow to develop any kind of large-scale application. Depending on the particular brand of development methodology you happen to be following, some of the global set of "rules" may actually apply. But in the field of large-scale web applications, there are three rules that crop up again and again in successful development teams. Perhaps "rule" is too strong a term and "guideline" would be more aptyou can certainly ignore one or all of them and still turn out a working product. These three simple rules are designed to help you avoid common pitfalls when moving from the small- to large-scale applications, and to get you there faster:

• Use source control.

• Have a one-step build.

• Track your bugs.

And we'll deal with each of them in turn.