The War on Best Practices
Every now and then in this profession it is necessary to take a step back, reassess the situation and realise that what you are doing, what you have always been doing, is utterly stupid. Somehow you’ve acquired a dubious habit, or adopted someone else’s superstition, and through unquestioned repetition it has become enshrined as a best practice. It may have made sense at some point but now it’s just the way we’ve always done it, the way that everybody else does it.
The term “best practice” is an insidious corporate platitude, an appeal to a non-existent authority, and an excuse to justify mediocrity. If you aspire to something more than mediocrity then eradicate the notion of best practices. Best practices destroy critical thinking. These aren’t good practices, or proven practices, these are best practices. Why bother considering alternatives? What could be better than the best practice?
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Comments
Renaud Denis replied on Thu, 2012/08/30 - 1:17am
Hey, thank you for your post!
You assume that best practices are static, and not evolving, which in my opinion is wrong or specific to some companies.
Your issue, if any, is about your team organization, not about the existence of best practices in the computing world.
If you want to make a product (of a reasonable size) sustainable on the mid-long term, I wish you good luck if your team members don't agree on common coding and design practices (some call them 'best practices') ;)
Borislav Iordanov replied on Thu, 2012/08/30 - 9:42pm
Sometimes it's good to have an excuse not to think. If your core business is about A, but you have a problem about B, why would you be innovating in B. It takes mental energy, and it's risky. So you look for advice elsewhere...
The problem with best practices is that people always use them as excuses not to think even when they are supposed to be thinking. People like the avoid thinking because it's painful. There's no shortage of popular frameworks that are truly horrific, but adopted by progammers that pride themselves as critifical thinkers, yet follow like sheep the latest fad as long as there's enough buzz.