Much of software engineering is based on our habitual learned behaviors through years of experience, and what are habits but behaviours that have been detached from the logic that created them? John re-attaches those habits into principles and gives you the opportunity to see and integrate his mental models.

Depending on your background you're either going to love it or hate it. It's not to say what he's done is wrong or right, just your particular experience is going to colour if you agree with it or not.

For those that love it, if you integrate these principles and get your team to buy in, you're going to have a better software engineering experience and a good source of information to point to back to back up the way you think.

For me, these sort of books represent a maturing of the industry and recognising that software engineering is an abstract team activity that having the right shared principles and shared mental models is the difference between a joyful experience on a team or not.

Shameless plug: I'm also working on community project that captures the best principles in software engineering on https://principles.dev - It's a labour of love, but if you like what I've written above, please contact me. I'd love to get some feedback.