Comment by tarsinge

You are right, but also I think the problem discussed in the article is that some of these hard rules are questionable. DRY for example: as a hard rule it leads to overly complex and hard to maintain code because of bad and/or useless abstractions everywhere (as illustrated in TFA). It needs either good experience to sense if they "feel good" like you say, or otherwise proven repetitions to reveal a relevant abstraction.