Best Practices
Considered Harmful
A few best practices
Best practice?
Eat lots of veggies & fruits,
exercise regularly,
value your sleep.
Best practice?
Add an index for
each database column
you SELECT-WHERE by.
Best practice?
Unit-test your code.
Best practice?
Don’t reinvent the wheel.
What does best practice even mean?
Best
Literally, the best!
Definition By Committee
A best practice is a method or technique
that has been generally accepted as
superior to any alternatives […]
because it has become
a standard way of doing things […].
Wikipedia, emphasis mine
Standard
It’s an industry standard.
Experts
Agreed on by experts.
Default
Good
Definition By Excellence
A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means […].
Wikipedia, emphasis mine
I call BS!
The Best
Vagueness stems from the term "best"
which is subjective.
Wikipedia - Best Practices, emphasis mine
Context
Good advice comes
with a rationale
so you can tell when
it becomes bad advice.
Stifling
The allure and seduction of best-practice thinking
poisons genuine dialogue about both what we know
and the limitations of what we know.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Redeeming best practices
Problems
Problems:
term best practice
common lack of context
lacking completeness
Terms
Better terms:
established practice
known pattern
good default
(whatever, really)
Context
Good default…
… in
${simplified-context}… unless
${counter-indicators}
Judging
context vs unisize
concrete vs abstract
measured vs guesswork
Balancing
Be wary of best practices,
but look for good defaults.
Don’t NIH!
Know your limits
and focus energy
on your core competency.
About Nicolai Parlog
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