From 2014 to 2025: Common Programming Mistakes That Still Matter — and 5 New Ones to Avoid

Benny October 30, 2025 0 comments

Back in 2014, we wrote about 10 programming taboos you should break immediately. At that time, topics like version control, commenting code, and not skipping testing were the hot issues for developers.

Fast-forward to 2025 — many of those lessons still hold true. But the context has changed. Cloud-native development, DevOps culture, AI-assisted coding, and global security concerns have added new dimensions to what we consider “taboos.”

Let’s revisit the old list, see what still applies, and then look at the new taboos every developer should avoid today.

The Classic 10 (2014) — Still Relevant

Here’s a quick refresher of the original 10 taboos from 2014:

1. Not honing non-technical skills — soft skills, empathy, communication.
2. Not being judicious about coding — reinventing the wheel, ignoring templates/libraries.
3. Not keeping code understandable — bad naming, no comments, confusing flow.
4. Not using proven tools/techniques — poor error handling, empty catch blocks.
5. Poor version control — missing commits, bad commit messages, no sync.
6. Not keeping oneself updated — lack of training, slow to adopt new trends.
7. Inadequate testing — ignoring unit, mock, and integration tests.
8. Security lapses — input validation, SQL injection, XSS, CSRF.
9. Poor client communication — silence until delivery, reactive updates.
10. Cutting corners under deadlines — sacrificing quality for speed.

What Changed?

Still true: All 10 remain valid — they’re like “coding commandments.”
Changed in emphasis:

• Version control ? From SVN/Mercurial to Git/GitHub/GitLab.
• Testing ? Now expected as automated pipelines in CI/CD.
• Security ? Threats are wider (APIs, cloud misconfigs, supply chain attacks).
• Keeping updated ? Today this means DevOps, AI tools, and cloud-native design.

In other words: the principles haven’t aged — the tools and risks around them have.

The 5 New Programming Taboos of 2025

1. Ignoring Accessibility (the new “responsive design”)

In 2014, responsive design was the buzzword. By 2025, accessibility is no longer optional. Over 1.3 billion people worldwide live with some form of disability (WHO). Accessibility lawsuits have risen steadily — in the U.S. alone, over 4,600 ADA website lawsuits were filed in 2023. Poor accessibility means you alienate real users and risk legal challenges.

Taboo: Shipping a product that only “works on your machine” but leaves out users with screen readers, keyboard navigation, or color blindness.

2. Skipping Dependency Security

Most modern apps are built on hundreds of open-source packages. A single vulnerability can compromise the whole system. The 2021 Log4j vulnerability exposed millions of apps worldwide. Studies show 80–90% of modern codebases are made up of third-party components. Attackers increasingly target supply chains (npm, PyPI, Composer) rather than your core code.

Taboo: Not running automated security scans (Snyk, Dependabot, npm audit) or ignoring patch updates.

3. Overlooking CI/CD and Automation

In 2014, “inadequate testing” meant skipping unit tests. Today, the taboo is larger: not automating the entire flow. Teams that adopt CI/CD pipelines deploy 200x more frequently with far fewer failures (DORA State of DevOps report). Manual builds, deployments, and tests are now considered wasteful and risky.

Taboo: Relying on manual QA and deployment when tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or CircleCI can handle it safely and repeatedly.

4. Neglecting Observability

In the past, a few log files were enough. Not anymore. Today’s systems are distributed — microservices, cloud functions, APIs across regions. Without logs, metrics, and traces, debugging becomes a needle-in-haystack problem. Gartner reports that 70% of outages in cloud-native systems take longer to fix due to poor observability.

Taboo: Shipping code without proper logging, monitoring, or alerting (using tools like OpenTelemetry, Datadog, Sentry, Prometheus).

5. Blindly Trusting AI-Generated Code

In 2014, the closest thing we had to “AI help” was Stack Overflow. In 2025, AI assistants (GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Tabnine) write large chunks of code. A Stanford study found that developers using AI assistants wrote code faster, but introduced 40% more security vulnerabilities when unchecked. AI can hallucinate APIs, misuse libraries, or produce inefficient code.

Taboo: Treating AI as autopilot. The right approach is using AI as a pair programmer — review everything, add tests, and validate against business requirements.

Old vs New: How They Fit Together

2014 Taboo	2025 Reality
Poor client communication	Still true — but now clients expect dashboards, Agile ceremonies, async updates.
Inadequate testing	Expanded into “no CI/CD or test automation.”
Security lapses	Broader: supply-chain security, API protection, cloud misconfigs.
Not keeping updated	Now means staying current with DevOps, cloud, AI, accessibility.
Not honing soft skills	Even more critical with remote-first, cross-cultural teams.

The old list covered the foundations. The new list highlights modern realities that didn’t exist (or weren’t mainstream) in 2014.

Wrapping Up

When we first published 10 programming taboos you should break immediately, they felt like reminders to programmers of the “basics.” Ten years later, they still do. But the field has matured, and so have the mistakes.

The new taboos — accessibility, dependency security, automation, observability, and AI misuse — reflect the world we build software in today: cloud-native, AI-driven, and global.

The lesson is clear: Good coding isn’t just about syntax. It’s about responsibility — to your team, your clients, and your users.