--- title: ETC - The principle to guide engineering | daily.dev description: The ETC (Easy To Change) principle is proposed as the single unifying principle to evaluate all software engineering decisions. Rather than dogmatically... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/etc---the-principle-to-guide-engineering-al8u2ema7 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: ETC - The principle to guide engineering | daily.dev og:description: The ETC (Easy To Change) principle is proposed as the single unifying principle to evaluate all software engineering decisions. Rather than dogmatically... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/etc---the-principle-to-guide-engineering-al8u2ema7 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/al8u2eMa7.png og:image:alt: ETC - The principle to guide engineering og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # ETC - The principle to guide engineering **[BirkeyCo](https://daily.dev/sources/birkey)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary The ETC (Easy To Change) principle is proposed as the single unifying principle to evaluate all software engineering decisions. Rather than dogmatically adopting paradigms like microservices vs monolith, top-down vs bottom-up design, or OO vs FP, engineers should ask whether a given approach makes their system easier to change. The post argues that blind adoption of any paradigm without this grounding question is the root cause of most engineering problems, and that ETC can serve as a litmus test for principles like SOLID, TDD, BDD, and DDD as well. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Cost of Change in Software](https://daily.dev/posts/the-cost-of-change-in-software-zgqnzhu9w) · Ruby Flow · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Engineering of the Possible: Beyond the “Best Practices” Dogma](https://daily.dev/posts/the-engineering-of-the-possible-beyond-the-best-practices-dogma-jbljzq9xc) · Codemotion · 5 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Programmer's Paradox](https://daily.dev/posts/the-programmer-s-paradox-0jiktgc9d) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#general-programming](https://daily.dev/tags/general-programming), [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#microservices](https://daily.dev/tags/microservices), [#functional-programming](https://daily.dev/tags/functional-programming) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/etc---the-principle-to-guide-engineering-al8u2ema7) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"ETC - The principle to guide engineering","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/etc---the-principle-to-guide-engineering-al8u2ema7","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/etc---the-principle-to-guide-engineering-al8u2ema7"},"datePublished":"2026-03-31T12:29:19.607Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T12:45:43.678Z","description":"The ETC (Easy To Change) principle is proposed as the single unifying principle to evaluate all software engineering decisions. 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