I found a great well articulated talk by Rich Hickey that very much mirrors my own current understanding about how to write maintainable software. If you can stomach a 10 minutes definition of the words simple and easy its well worth a watch. But then again if you don’t already share these views you may just think: what a loon. Programming philosophy is very much like politics or religion I suppose. You seldom change views or do so very gradually.
I especially like the parts about how to treat data as I have come to that conclusion myself. I get much satisfaction when I manage to apply some of these ideas in a language as rudimentary as C.