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I won't speak to the sarcasm-as-argument response, but I will say that there is a sentiment behind it that I do agree with. I say - with differing commentary a

I won't speak to the sarcasm-as-argument response, but I will say that there is a sentiment behind it that I do agree with. I say - with differing commentary after the first 4-5 sentences - in every class I teach: "I don't like the phrase 'best practice'. I won't use it. It's presumptuous and condescending. What's best for me might suck for you. Who am I to know your business requirements? There is only one true 'best practice', in my view, and that is simply to have practices that you and your team follow that serve to further your business goals and meet your business requirements. SharePoint isn't a best practice, but a system to support a corporate culture of collaboration or information sharing is a practice that many businesses can agree with. jQuery isn't a best practice, but using a framework that improves your team's productivity and helps it to meet your business' requirements - that's a good practice to follow." We need a new phrase that gets the point across without the cognitive burden of being condescending and presumptuous. Consensus practice? Common practice? Popular practice? I don't know. But I know that "best" is a superlative that is too often used to disguise a marketing goal or to dazzle the listener/reader into accepting the superiority of the person using it.

kbenson 11y ago
Depending on how it's used, I find "idiomatic" to be useful. Built into the meaning is that it may not translate to other areas, and most people understand that while it is a useful shorthand to making something succinct and expressive, you fall back to other things when it doesn't match well.
kriro 11y ago
Traditionally (at least I've first heard these phrases in a business context) "best practice" describes what very successful businesses do and "common practice" describes what the average business does. I ignore this distinction and have just replaced "best practice" with "common practice" since I pretty much always want to say something along the lines of "this is how a lot of people do it, there's good reasons for it (list of reasons) but everything depends on context so critically reflect if it makes sense to follow these practices or not on an individual basis"

kbenson 11y ago

Depending on how it's used, I find "idiomatic" to be useful. Built into the meaning is that it may not translate to other areas, and most people understand that while it is a useful shorthand to making something succinct and expressive, you fall back to other things when it doesn't match well.

kriro 11y ago

Traditionally (at least I've first heard these phrases in a business context) "best practice" describes what very successful businesses do and "common practice" describes what the average business does. I ignore this distinction and have just replaced "best practice" with "common practice" since I pretty much always want to say something along the lines of "this is how a lot of people do it, there's good reasons for it (list of reasons) but everything depends on context so critically reflect if it makes sense to follow these practices or not on an individual basis"