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Against Best Practices

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Re: Against Best Practices

#131

Post by michael1999 »

chthonicdaemon wrote: post #51

Rules travel further than reasons. The problem is that a lot of true things in the world are counter-intuitive. So insisting that all the rules "make sense" in an immediate way is clearly a non-starter. In the safety industry there are many examples of best practices that are bred from experience but end up being counter-intuitive to some. For instance, it might not make intuitive sense that a pilot who has gone thro…

Who drove that standardization in chemical engineering?

I ask, because the intra-organizational dynamics of software have been ugly for standardization. Vendor lock-in, submarine patents, embrace-and-extend, etc. have meant naive adoption of "best practices" meant a one-way ticket to an expensive, obsolete system, with an eventually insolvent vendor.

Re: Against Best Practices

#132

Post by adamc »

coding123 wrote: post #124
lkrubner wrote: post #80

Dan Morena, CTO at Upright.com, made the point that every startup was unique and therefore every startup had to find out what was best for it, while ignoring whatever was considered "best practice." I wrote what he told me here: https://respectfulleadership.substack.com/p/dan-morena-is-a-... My summary of his idea: No army has ever conquered a country. An army conquers this muddy ditch over here, that open wheat fiel…

The army that is conquering is carrying best practice weapons, wearing best practice boots, best practice fatigues, best practice tanks, trucks, etc. They're best practice aiming, shooting, walking, communicating, hiring (mercs), hiding, etc... The people that are in the weeds are just doing the most simple things for their personal situation as they're taking over that granite rock or "copse of lush oak trees". It's…

Often not true. Often they are just "good enough" weapons, etc.

Re: Against Best Practices

#133

Post by coding123 »

godelski wrote: post #129
coding123 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The army that is conquering is carrying best practice weapons, wearing best practice boots, best practice fatigues, best practice tanks, trucks, etc. They're best practice aiming, shooting, walking, communicating, hiring (mercs), hiding, etc... The people that are in the weeds are just doing the most simple things for their personal situation as they're taking over that granite rock or "copse of lush oak trees". It's…

This is frequently not true. There’s examples all through history of weaker and poorer armies defeating larger ones. From Zulus, to the American Revolution, to the great Emu wars. Surely the birds were not more advanced than men armed with machine guns. But it’s only when the smaller forces can take advantage and leverage what they have better than others. It’s best practices, but what’s best is not universal, it’s b…

That doesn't defeat my point- is the smaller/poorer army using best practices?

When all things are the same, the army with more will win.

When all things are not the same, there are little bonuses that can cause the smaller/poorer, malnourished army to win against those with machine guns. Often it's just knowing the territory. Again though, these people are individually making decisions. There isn't some massively smart borg ball sending individual orders to shoot 3 inches to the left to each drone.

Re: Against Best Practices

#134

Post by cpill »

gspencley wrote: post #66

> but because they’re mostly pounded by either 1) various types of zealots, idiots, and assholes who abuse these kind of “best practices” as an argument from authority, or 2) inexperienced programmers who lack the ability to judge the applicability, The author might go on to make other points that are worth discussing, but lays out his supporting arguments clearly in the opening paragraph. Best practices do not neces…

I think the problem is that a lot of computer nerds are a bit OCD and like to apply one solution to everything. You see this with how they get crazy about strictly typed versus not strictly typed, one particular language for every application, or spaces vs tabs. I was like that when I was younger but as I get older I realized the world is the complex place and has programs have to deal with the real world there is no one solution fits all, or a best practice that always applies. To become good at programming you need to be adaptable to the problem space. Best practices are great for juniors once you've got a bit of experience you should use that instead.

Re: Against Best Practices

#136

Post by godelski »

coding123 wrote: post #133
godelski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is frequently not true. There’s examples all through history of weaker and poorer armies defeating larger ones. From Zulus, to the American Revolution, to the great Emu wars. Surely the birds were not more advanced than men armed with machine guns. But it’s only when the smaller forces can take advantage and leverage what they have better than others. It’s best practices, but what’s best is not universal, it’s b…

That doesn't defeat my point- is the smaller/poorer army using best practices? When all things are the same, the army with more will win. When all things are not the same, there are little bonuses that can cause the smaller/poorer, malnourished army to win against those with machine guns. Often it's just knowing the territory. Again though, these people are individually making decisions. There isn't some massively sm…

  > That doesn't defeat my point- is the smaller/poorer army using best practices?
I don't agree, but neither do I disagree. But I do think it is ambiguous enough that it is not using best practices to illustrate the point you intend.

  > malnourished army to win against those with machine guns
With my example I meant literal birds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

Re: Against Best Practices

#137

Post by agentultra »

michael1999 wrote: post #130
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 like SWEBOK, but I don't understand your point. SWEBOK seems the opposite of that. A body of knowledge is not at all the same thing as a best practice. The only unapologetic best practice in SWEBOK is that professionals should be familiar with every topic in SWEBOK. Definitely not that you _should_ do everything in the book. The book is quite sophisticated in this. It explicitly separate the technical knowledge fro…

> I don't understand your point

In my view best practices emerge from a body of knowledge (or sometimes from the practice and wisdom of others that haven't been documented/accepted/etc yet) and are "shortcuts."

I'm not defending Postel's Law; I agree that, after years of practice and research, it leads to security issues and surprises.

However, the point is that these kinds of principles don't arise out of people's heads and become accepted wisdom for nothing; they're usually built off of an implied (or explicit) body of knowledge.

Does that make sense?

Re: Against Best Practices

#138

Post by cafard »

gbacon wrote: post #109
lkrubner wrote: post #80

Dan Morena, CTO at Upright.com, made the point that every startup was unique and therefore every startup had to find out what was best for it, while ignoring whatever was considered "best practice." I wrote what he told me here: https://respectfulleadership.substack.com/p/dan-morena-is-a-... My summary of his idea: No army has ever conquered a country. An army conquers this muddy ditch over here, that open wheat fiel…

Likewise, people do business with people, not with companies. Assert that “society” is merely an abstraction invoked for political gain to become an individualist.

Seriously? From whom do I buy a computer or a car or a refrigertor?

Re: Against Best Practices

#139

Post by cafard »

godelski wrote: post #129
coding123 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The army that is conquering is carrying best practice weapons, wearing best practice boots, best practice fatigues, best practice tanks, trucks, etc. They're best practice aiming, shooting, walking, communicating, hiring (mercs), hiding, etc... The people that are in the weeds are just doing the most simple things for their personal situation as they're taking over that granite rock or "copse of lush oak trees". It's…

This is frequently not true. There’s examples all through history of weaker and poorer armies defeating larger ones. From Zulus, to the American Revolution, to the great Emu wars. Surely the birds were not more advanced than men armed with machine guns. But it’s only when the smaller forces can take advantage and leverage what they have better than others. It’s best practices, but what’s best is not universal, it’s b…

The Zulus won a pitched battle or two, but lost the war.

Re: Against Best Practices

#140

Post by isk517 »

cpill wrote: post #134
gspencley wrote: post #66

> but because they’re mostly pounded by either 1) various types of zealots, idiots, and assholes who abuse these kind of “best practices” as an argument from authority, or 2) inexperienced programmers who lack the ability to judge the applicability, The author might go on to make other points that are worth discussing, but lays out his supporting arguments clearly in the opening paragraph. Best practices do not neces…

I think the problem is that a lot of computer nerds are a bit OCD and like to apply one solution to everything. You see this with how they get crazy about strictly typed versus not strictly typed, one particular language for every application, or spaces vs tabs. I was like that when I was younger but as I get older I realized the world is the complex place and has programs have to deal with the real world there is no…

My job revolves around adopting software solutions to solve practical problems and let me tell you, this mentality of one solution to everything goes beyond just the coding. I've encountered countless developers that seems to believe that the reality of a business should conform itself to how the developer believes your business/industry should operate.
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