Teach them the most basic rule of all (Score 0)

And that rule is to make your god damn code readable. Use comments if it makes sense, break up blocks of code into digestible blocks, useful function names and variable names. I can't remember how many times I've seen unreadable code with 1000 line functions, no comments at all, different classes with similar names, braces that don't line up, etc. Oh well, given slash dot I expected to have this one moderated down.