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'm one of the devs not aware of the SWEBOK. Searching the internet all I can find is links to "the guide to SWEBOK".

https://ieeecs-media.computer.org/media/education/swebok/swe...

But, you know, I want the whole ordeal. I want the SWEBOK, not the "how to read the SWEBOK". Where can I find it?

The books that encode some standardized Xbok are always named "The guide to the Xbok".

The actual BOK isn't supposed to have a concrete representation. It's not supposed to be standardized either, but standard organizations always ignore that part.

This. They’re supposed to represent the state of the art which is constantly evolving.