OT: Has anyone done a similar distillation for the 12 factor app? As I was reading up on 12 factor, it seemed like you could distill it into 4 principles or so.
I have definitely done that in my mind. I don't agree with all of the items in 12 factor. The principles that drive those 12 factors are ones that I follow, just not the specific implementation that is presented. I don't know that it distills down to 4 or whatever number, but I'm certain it is less than 12. For example I don't think that it's always appropriate to store config in the environment variables. But the principle of not embedding config in code is one that I follow.
Can you expand on those 4? 12-factor has been a great guiding principle for me the last few years.