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Against Best Practices

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Re: Against Best Practices

#151

Post by jrs235 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #143
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…

To put it simply, best practices are, at best, context-dependent. Best practices for avionics software are not the same as best practices for a CRUD form on your mailing-list signup page. And to be fair, the best practices for designing a bridge or a skyscraper are not the same ones for designing a doghouse.

This! "Best practice" depends on the circumstances. Are "micro services" a best practice? What about "monolithic architecture"? Those choices are not best practices in and of themselves but may be best practices when considering organization/dev team size, application user count, computational demands on the application/system, etc. What are the goals and vision of the future? Let's future-proof and pre-optimize for problems we don't currently have nor will likely have! (And don't get me started on the number of folks that dream about "we're going to need to be able to scale!" for a fairly simple CRUD app that will most likely be used by hundreads, maybe thousands, or users and realistically need 100's of "simple" requests per second (most likely per minute... )

Re: Against Best Practices

#152

Post by grey-area »

HelloNurse wrote: post #99
grey-area wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other engineering disciplines have certification, codes and regulations for specific domains, which are enforced by law. DRY is a perfect example though of something which in moderation is a good idea but as the article says is vulnerable to ‘inexperienced programmers who lack the ability to judge the applicability’ and if over-eagerly applied leads to over-abstraction and premature abstraction which does more harm t…

Before regulations, other engineering disciplines have far more objective decisions and calculations than software engineering. Consider a mechanical analogue of DRY: choosing between reusing identical parts to make design, assembly and repairs simpler or designing similar but different parts because they are worth optimizing (e.g. a whole IKEA cabinet with interchangeable screws or with short and long ones). Unlike…

Well I think the point is you can’t legislate on things like style, or at least it is pointless to do so and other disciplines don’t try to. DRY is a style guideline.

What you can legislate/codify are procedures, safety and outcomes. So for example building designs must be signed off by a structural engineer and architect, both of whom are liable if the buildings collapses and kills someone. There are standards materials must meet and for which materials can be used. Buildings must meet standards for fire protection, air flow, heat loss etc.

I’m not sure software is at the stage where we even know what to codify or what is good and what is not good.

Re: Against Best Practices

#153

Post by munificent »

It took me way too long to realize this, but my experience is that "zealots, idiots, and assholes" (as the author says) are going to abuse something and wield it as a bludgeon against other people. This appears to be a fixed, immutable property of the universe.

If you take it as a given that some number of people are going to get an idea lodged in their head, treat it like gospel, and beat as many other people in the head with it as they can... the best strategy you can adopt is to have the ideas in their head be at least somewhat useful.

Yes, reasonable people understand that "best practices" come with all sorts of context and caveats that need to be taken into account. But you won't always be dealing with reasonable people, and if you're dealing with an asshole, zealot, or idiot, I'd sure as hell prefer one who blindly believes in, say, test-first development versus believing that "test code isn't real code, you should spend all of your time writing code that ships to users" or some other even worse nonsense.

Re: Against Best Practices

#154

Post by bobbruno »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #92

IME "best practices" is a demand problem, not a supply problem. IE far more people want best practices than there are actual best practices. Prospects and customers desperately want to know our "best practices" and then complain when we say "it depends" or something experimentation is required, as if we are hiding secret teachings from them. For me this is more a personality test: people who just want solutions on a…

That's an interesting point, which leads me to my main reason for coming to these comments and leaving my 2 cents: there are way less best practices of there than one would believe by looking at all the places, people and firms offering some set of "best practices".

One thing I learned after many years working in consulting is that, more often than one would believe, best practices are just a compilation of whatever could be found (hopefully at least common practices, more often "things I could find that were minimally documented to be reusable"), with no serious analysis of their claim of superiority other than them being common.

So, first thing: learn to challenge the claim of "best". Best for whom? Under what context? What other not-so-good practices are out there, and why is this the best?

Second:if it's documented and evident enough to be treated as a best practice, it's probably fairly common knowledge already. Barring the commonality of really bad things being done out there, don't expect that you'll become much more than mediocre by adopting best practices. By the time they get to be called there, they are no longer any competitive advantage, more a basic thing you should be doing already - assuming they are indeed best practices (as per my previous point).

It's not that I'm against best practices as a concept, or compiled bodies of knowledge. Just don't expect them to do more than keep you somewhere in the middle. True leadership and innovation lies where best practices have not been established yet - together with all the dangers and mistakes you can make on uncharted waters.

Re: Against Best Practices

#155

Post by recursive »

bongodongobob wrote: post #120

Ragebait post unless you enjoy playing semantics games with verysmarts. If you don't understand the purpose of the term "best practices", they were probably made for someone like you.

The problem is when one does understand, but is being subjected to them by someone who doesn't.

Re: Against Best Practices

#157

Post by miguelbemartin »

"Best practices" is a tool that you need to know how to use it. Same as any other tool. If you do use the same tool for everything, this is when a tool becomes a bad thing.

"Best practices" is a really good tool if you use it in the correct context.

Re: Against Best Practices

#158

Post by miguelbemartin »

miguelbemartin wrote: post #157

"Best practices" is a tool that you need to know how to use it. Same as any other tool. If you do use the same tool for everything, this is when a tool becomes a bad thing. "Best practices" is a really good tool if you use it in the correct context.

"Because it's best practices" can not be used as an argument.

Re: Against Best Practices

#159

Post by safetytrick »

nativeit wrote: post #118
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.

I'm proud of my little joke on dogmas: "The only dogma I believe is that all dogmas are wrong".

Re: Against Best Practices

#160

Post by lolinder »

dambi0 wrote: post #100
lolinder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which still has immense value. It's standard practice to install outlets with NEMA connectors in North American buildings. Sure, you could technically swap those out with a more optimal connector that is "better" (one that prevents electricity from flowing while the plug is partially exposed, for example), but using the standard practice is best practice for human-shaped reasons that are often not apparent to early-c…

I’m a bit confused with the analogy here. Would the non NEMA outlets work with my existing things or is the implication that they wouldn’t?

They wouldn't, but about half of the developers commenting here would do the equivalent of switching from NEMA to something else on the grounds that the something else is better.
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