Against Best Practices

I think the rejection is too strong in this article. The idea of, “best practices,” comes from an established Body of Knowledge. There is one published for software development called the SoftWare Engineering Body of Knowledge or SWEBOK; published by the IEEE.

The author seems to be arguing for nuance: that these “laws,” require context and shouldn’t be applied blindly. I agree.

However they shouldn’t be rejected out of hand either and people recommending them aren’t idiots.

Update: one problem with “best practices,” that I think the article might have unwittingly implied is that most software developers aren’t aware of SWEBOK and are repeating maxims and aphorisms they heard from others. Software development is often powered by folklore and hand waving.

I think it is best to strongly reject the idea "best practices will always benefit you".

Most best practices that I have been told about were low local maxima at best, and very harmful at worst.

If someone quotes a best practice to you and can't cite a convincing "why", you should immediately reject it.

It might still be a good idea, but you shouldn't seriously consider it until you hear an actually convincing reason (not a "just so" explanation that skips several steps).

I don't think anyone has ever thought that best practices will always benefit you. Nothing always works every single time in every single case.

This whole thing is really silly and obvious.

Of course you shouldn't blindly follow advice without thinking. But not following advice just because it might not always be right is also a bad idea.

My advice: In general, you should follow good advice from experienced people. If enough experts say this is the best way to do something, you should probably do that, most of the time.

But that advice will never trend on HN because it isn't clickbait or extreme, and requires using your noggin.

> I don't think anyone has ever thought that best practices will always benefit you.

Whenever a "best practice" or "convention" has been presented to me, that is how it has been framed. (...it is best practice, therefore, it will definitely benefit you to follow it)

I do not know what context this happened to you in, but in the context of building something quickly, learning, while not being an expert in an area, best practice are a common crutch.

In many work places either they do not have time or at least think they do have time to think things through 100% for themselves from first principles so they depend on best practices instead.

That makes sense to me and I would expect better results on average with using best practices than rejection of best practices in the above context.

That said I try to work on things where I am not always in the above context, where thinking things through end to end provides a competitive advantage.