Chris Mahan in the comments below points out that one of the key points of Mark Zuckerberg’s memo has been part of programming ethos for a long time. He links to a 1994 article in the Linux Journal where a group of Bell Labs researchers working on the UNIX operating system made a list of four principles.

Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don’t insist on interactive input.

Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don’t hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.

Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you’ve finished using them.