Holding a program in one's head 19 years ago
Most of this appears to be old coder wisdom and I fully agree with it. However, there is one point I am at odds with. I dislike code ownership and I think a small team of good people should be encouraged to review and rewrite any portion of the system they deem needs it. As Paul suggests, rewriting is core to understanding. Allowing and encouraging team members to rewrite improves both understanding and code. I realize this isn't old coder wisdom but I believe it is critical to making a small team behave more closely to the ideal of a single programmer.
-sdk