This is a very important point. Your budget of "being careful" might be best spent on better software engineering. But it is also possible that you should rather spend it on other things such as better mathematical model, better input data sets or something else. And a (sub)field prospers most if different groups and researchers spent there (very limited and expensive) time on different things. Trying to shame everybody into following the magic 27 rules of software engineering is a step back, not forward.