Programming tip: Be a domain expert

You build software to solve domain problems. Knowing the domain inside out will make your development life much easier. For example:

• Your database structure will more closely model the relationship of different domain entities. This will make your application code easier to think about. The domain concepts will map neatly to your entities.
• Similar to the previous point – you will name things much better (e.g., variables, functions, classes, etc). Good naming goes a long way to improving code readability and maintainability.
• You’ll be in a better position to make trade-offs. Knowing what problems are high priority vs low priority for your users will help you decide which parts of the codebase need more attention and which parts are okay to leave unpolished.