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Against Best Practices

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Re: Against Best Practices

#211

Post by michael1999 »

chthonicdaemon wrote: post #195
michael1999 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's an interesting question. I guess it's partly the fact that chemical industry is very large-scale, often with one company in charge (think Shell or Total). The realities of having one organisation in charge of many large operations across many countries probably gives higher reward on standardisation. This is a bit like coding to "Google style guidelines" or whatever. The big organisation has more incentive to…

Yeah. The capital structure is radically different. And physical interop is a different game.

I suspect we would have a defined Software Engineering profession if there were only a few dozen vertically integrated firms.

Re: Against Best Practices

#212

Post by dpig_ »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #184
munificent wrote: post #153

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…

In any given culture (software development) you will have a set of traditions that may be used by the members of that culture to signify status, experience, pedigree and authority, and often some combination of all these and other descriptors. And, by virtue of creating a culture, you will also necessarily create a counter-culture, which rejects those things (performatively or otherwise) in an effort to do the exact…

Hippies create Cops / Cops create Hippies

Re: Against Best Practices

#213

Post by lmm »

trelane wrote: post #203
lmm wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might still be a good idea, but you shouldn't seriously consider it until you hear an actually convincing reason (not a "just so" explanation that skips several steps). If everyone follows that then every decision will be bikeshedded to death. I think part of the point of the concept of "best practices" is that some ideas should be at least somewhat entrenched, followed by default, and not overturned without goo…

It strikes me that, if a decision can be bikeshedded to death, it's not, generally speaking, an important decision.

Well calling something a bikeshed is implicitly claiming that it's not so important. Often the specific choice is not very important, but making a choice rather than not making one is important. And while an effective organisation would not allow important decisionmaking to get derailed, many organisations are ineffective.

Re: Against Best Practices

#215

Post by bayindirh »

auggierose wrote: post #61
bayindirh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. For example, If I'm writing something in a programming language I don't know by heart, I start by following the best practices recommended by the language authors, then start to flex them when they become less useful, until I hit a nice pitfall which these best practices are designed to avoid. This allows me to start faster, and be in a better shape in short term. Then I can flex advice more and mor…

I also read the language tutorial first. But if they don't explain their best practices (and often the explanation is simple), I don't care much for them.

I don't mean tutorials, I meant guides. For example Go has guides on how to do something. e.g.: How to Organize a Go Module [0].

[0]: https://go.dev/doc/modules/layout

Re: Against Best Practices

#216

Post by a96 »

rileymat2 wrote: post #161
munificent wrote: post #153

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…

The one thing that gives me pause, is that I have seen stages of mastery where the base stage is repetition and adherence to rules to internalize them before understanding them and knowing when to break them. If much of our industry is new, evangelizing these rules as harder and faster than they are makes a lot of sense to bring people to get people ready for the next stage. Then they learn the context and caveats ov…

That made me want to look up some link about Shu Ha Ri. Turns out that's actually been made popular in some corners of sw dev already. E.g. https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ShuHaRi.html

Re: Against Best Practices

#217

Post by a96 »

resonious wrote: post #44
rileymat2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That implies they were created with best practices in the first place.

If not, then what was created with best practices in the first place? If we can agree that most large, financially successful software projects are of questionable quality, then either - they used best practices and yet they still suck, OR - they did not use best practices, but are widely successful anyway. So no matter how you look at it, software best practices just haven't panned out.

"All hardware sucks, all software sucks."

Re: Against Best Practices

#218

Post by a96 »

yazantapuz wrote: post #200

Teaching threads on a operating systems course, i have witnessed some of the more convoluted code ever by students so afraid on global variables that they turned simple exercises into monstrosities. So yes, f*ck the rigid rules. They have to unlearn best practices guidelines, to which they were "blood-written sacred rules".

Well, in class environment, they've probably figured out that it's not a sane or correct answer that gets the points. It's the answer that follows all the rules that have been set in the material for that class. It's extremely typical for teachers to grade based on the "best practices" and "sacred rules" that the classes teach. Showing ideas, outside knowledge or solutions that are simpler than the course material just gets a student punished.
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