[Joeri]

Exactly. There is almost no advice in programming which applies to all situations. The trick is knowing when not to follow the advice, and that cannot be explained in a one-liner.

Or, as the tao of programming says:

There once was a Master Programmer who wrote unstructured programs. A novice programmer, seeking to imitate him, also began to write unstructured programs. When the novice asked the Master to evaluate his progress, the Master criticized him for writing unstructured programs, saying, "What is appropriate for the Master is not appropriate for the novice. You must understand Tao before transcending structure."