

The Road to Mediocrity is Paved with Best Practices. - damada2
http://www.adambreckler.com/the-road-to-mediocrity-is-paved-with-best-practices

======
nostrademons
He ignores a lot of examples where best practices have simply become common
knowledge, and you'd never consider doing it any other way. For example,
structured programming - most languages don't even _provide_ a way to jump
into the middle of a code block now. Avoiding self-modifying code, unless you
live in Ruby-land. Lexical scoping, which is widely considered the only sane
default among language designers today, though we're still waiting for
mainstream languages to catch up. Multi-character variable names that don't
have to start with one particular letter (Fortran, I'm looking at you).
Automatic documentation generators - thank you JavaDoc. Garbage collection.
Having classes manage their own memory in languages that don't provide garbage
collection.

Today's "best practice" _may_ be tomorrow's fad - or it may be tomorrow's
common knowledge. The differentiating factor is usually the ratio of actual
experience to wild-eyed exuberance that its proponents have. So I'm betting
that Rails is just a fad, but several of the XP practices like unit testing
and standup meetings will have lasting impact.

------
enomar
There are plenty of situations where mediocrity is a fine goal. For many
projects, it's a step up. Perfect is the enemy of good.

~~~
apsurd
but good is the enemy of great.

[http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-
Others/dp/00...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-
Others/dp/0066620996)

~~~
ojbyrne
Tell that to Circuit City:

[http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/02/23/from-good-to-
great-...](http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/02/23/from-good-to-great-to-
bankruptcy-jim-collins-book-revisited/)

------
russell
I found the article meaningless. He says best practices are what everyone is
doing, therefore the embodiment of mediocrity.

I find "best practices" to be a useful checklist, especially in an area new to
me. If someone says it's a best practice, I take a look. Ultimately I may
decide their advice is of a little value.

~~~
Confusion
The fourth commenter at the blog makes an excellent point: people call it
'best practices', but they are actually 'common practices'. The reason
something is a common practice, is because it has been shown to work or,
lacking measurements to proove that something works, because it makes sense
and 'just works'.

Moreover, it's just a non-sequitur to conclude from 'mediocre company X does
Y' that 'doing Y makes a company mediocre'. What makes a company mediocre is
in the things they cannot single out in clear statements of the form 'we
should change practice Z, as it is not good.

~~~
narag
Also it could be called "best goals" instead. I've seen a lot of companies
that lie about what they really do, specially those certified with ISO and
family.

------
padmanabhan01
Nice and funny. But obviously, 'best' here refers to the best among all other
approaches/practices, and not best among all those companies following the
same 'best' practice.

------
silentbicycle
A big part of the problem with "best practices" is that the term becomes carte
blanche to justify a particular decision without understanding the reasoning
behind it. It's sad that it's become a kind of seemingly-authoritative
buzzword.

------
sh1mmer
This is a short post mostly devoid of content, where the author argues that
"Best Practices" are an oxymoron if everyone is doing them.

This is based on an assumption that at given point in time there isn't an
ideal solution (or an approximation which is nearly indistinguishable) for a
given problem.

I would disagree and say that while "best practices" can be a buzz word for
industry consensus, there are plenty of "best practices" which are genuine
best solutions.

This can be for a number of reasons, such as learning inertia on the part of
users. You might be able to invent a "better" user interface convention but if
it's unfamiliar or confusing to the majority of users used to an "inferior"
convention it's not necessarily a better practice to use the newer convention.

------
10ren
Best out of the set of possible practices, not out of the set of
practitioners.

State of the art sounds impressive, but it merely means the best we have at
the moment. Inventive people constantly improve it.

"Crossing the Chasm" talks about how most people in a given industry prefer to
do what everyone else is doing. Progress comes from the technology
"enthusiasts" (who simply love cool new stuff) and "visionaries" (who are
excited by new application of the technology to give them a x10 advantage).

There's also the distinction between competitive advantage and hygiene
factors. For the latter, it's cheaper and more reliable to just follow the
crowd than to experiment with risky new ways - save that for improving your
competitive advantage.

------
csbartus
Don't look at what is said but who is saying. I'll always take an advice from
PG, DHH or Stanislaw Lem but never from Anonymous.

------
ojbyrne
Dismissing "best practices" out of hand, is sort of like slavishly following
"best practices."

------
ilkhd2
These claims are logically looped, and for that reason are inconsistent. What
he claims, is actually "Best practice is avoid best practices". And he
justifies it with claims that following these practices causes mediocrity,
because everybody begin doing same thing. Well, sometimes, the best thing you
may want is mediocrity in something absolutely irrelevant and of secondary
importance. For sake of freeing your time for really important things.

