Hacker News Reader

I would submit the main point is: You can't learn that from a book but only from experience. The best balance isn't cast in stone but must be found for each problem domain. As much as you can, do your own experiments and experience the consequences of your decisions yourself. Remember that for nontrivial problems, a usual part of the job is learning exactly what problem it is that you have to solve.

For a novice coder I couldn't recommend Head First Design Patterns enough - the gang of four design patterns are a bit controversial these days but the way it steps you through and makes you think twice about how to organise things was really eye-opening for me back in the day.

Dealing effectively with legacy code:

http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Fea...

Clean code:

http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsman...