Long standing Delphi developer with special interest in automation of all development processes.
My primary mantra is OnceAndOnlyOnce, which I stole from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OnceAndOnlyOnce and is IMO the single most essential principle for a developer to strive to.
When developing, I try to follow the internal desire of code to become the simplest it can possibly be. I also believe in the skill of googling :)
My professional goal is TDD. Seeing that most Delphi code-bases I've seen barely have any testing at all, this will obviously take time and effort..