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Against Best Practices

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Re: Against Best Practices

#111

Post by marcosdumay »

agentultra wrote: post #98
marcosdumay wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, literally the "state" as in what is the knowledge that everybody shares. We usually call that by something closer to "minimum common denominator".

What people usually call "state of the art" is the best knowledge that is reasonably well known. That is out of scope. If you take a look on this one, it's full of stuff that we knew not to use on the 20th century. This is typical.

Re: Against Best Practices

#112

Post by eterm »

Following "Best practice" isn't about doing what is "best", it's about being predictable.

In many cases, being predictable is better for future maintenance than forging your own path, even if the custom solution is "better" against all (current) metrics.

Re: Against Best Practices

#113

Post by MantisShrimp90 »

The longer I program the more I agree with this take. I have seen too much power and dominance from people who wield it as a cudgel against everyone else in the room who doesn't care enough to double-check the practice.

Put another way, knowledge is knowing best-practices, but wisdom is knowing where and when to apply them. Unfortunately, most building software have only the knowledge and there is too little consideration for the fact that structure is not free, and considerations must be made for when velocity is the primary objective vs safety and adherence to best-practices.

It all comes down to architecture design in the end.

Re: Against Best Practices

#114

Post by js2 »

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Emerson_and_Wilde_on...

(This is relevant to the extent that programming is as much art as science/engineering.)

Re: Against Best Practices

#115

Post by rfrey »

javcasas wrote: post #59
agentultra wrote: post #55

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 ou…

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 confusion is because "BOK" is not "book of knowledge" but "body of knowledge". So a "guide" as a canonical source kinda makes sense.

Re: Against Best Practices

#116

Post by betenoire »

davorak wrote: post #96
betenoire wrote: post #87

Only software engineers pretend best practices exist outside of any useful context. - small localized team vs big distributed team - bug fixes and incremental improvements vs green field poc - saas vs system scripts Context matters, and if people aren't giving you the context in which they deem practices to be "best", they are myopically wrong

So outside of coworkers that have a hard time collaborating in general, is it a problem for others that their coworkers will not apply context? That has not been my experience.

I don't understand the question... If someone has a strong opinion, and they have arguments for their opinion, but don't recognize the significance of the context in which they've formed their opinions, they have blind spots they aren't aware of. Is that a problem? I dunno, that's up to you and your environment.

Re: Against Best Practices

#117

Post by ozim »

agentultra wrote: post #55

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 ou…

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

Also it shouldn't be taken for granted that best practice is always "best/good" - there definitely are idiots recommending best practices.

Re: Against Best Practices

#118

Post by nativeit »

layer8 wrote: post #105

The advantage of best practices is that you have something you can follow without having to analyze the situation in depth. The disadvantage of best practices is that you may have to analyze the situation in depth to notice that they maybe aren’t the best choice in the specific situation. The harm that best practices can do are lessened by viewing them as a rule of thumb conditioned on certain premises rather than as…

“Dogma” is the key word in this situation, I believe (and in a lot of similar situations). There are very few examples for when dogmatic obedience is healthy, helpful, or appropriate. Sadly, the trends seem to be heading the wrong way, with more tribalism than pragmatism.

Re: Against Best Practices

#119

Post by ssrc »

Like any other discussion of this kind[1] I think this one will go nowhere because 1) the question doesn't have a black and white answer, it's a sliding scale. 2) almost no one is giving examples of what they mean; if they were, they could find that they agree with the person they are replying to. And 3) most people will discard the experiences of people they disagree with "you didn't even try! maybe the problem is you!", and this is easy because this is the internet and the other person can be (is probably?) making it up.

[1]https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/09/23/the-duct-tape-prog...

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