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I've come across people using "best practice" as the sole justification for doing something in software engineering, but thankfully it's rare. Where it's not r

I've come across people using "best practice" as the sole justification for doing something in software engineering, but thankfully it's rare. Where it's not rare is medicine. You regularly hear the term spat out like a weapon, particularly in big hospitals. It's a very poor way to justify something. It's a statement of the obvious: everyone agrees you should use the best or most efficient way of doing something. What people don't agree on is what that is. So it's "we all agree we should be doing it the best way, and I say the best way is ...". You get no indication of why it's best practice, or how it's been chosen, or who chose it. Its more an appeal to authority. There is another term in medicine that's also bandied about frequently: "evidence based medicine". Unlike "best practice", it assums the obvious: everyone agrees we should be using the best way. It's telling you how the best way way chosen: from the evidence. More importantly it's also giving you permission to improve on it: find your own evidence. If you asked for to see evidence for "best practice", it's often seen as an attempt to undermine authority. If you asked to see the evidence behind evidence based medicine, the reaction your likely to see is "oh, you get it, here is what I have". When I hear "because it's best practice" or "this is best practice" now, I shudder. It's not an invitation to be part of a team working to produce the best outcome. It's telling you you're a minion, and you'd better follow the rules. But I think you are right in one sense, the reason we see it used far less in software development is we can often shoot something down with a few sentences of tightly reasoned logic. Evidence is often easy to come by. Medicine doesn't have that luxury, the body is too complex to reason about. It does have rigor and scientific analysis, but it takes a big studies and a lot of effort to gather.

Geminidog 6y ago
Agreed. There's a dichotomy here that a lot of people don't know about that might help you get a better picture of the distinction you mention. Logic and Science are different in the sense that Logic does not require any evidence. Logic uses simple assumptions called axioms and then theorems derived from those axioms to make broader statements about the system. A computer is basically a system molded around logic so that you can use logical reasoning to derive statements and ignore evidence. This is what I mean by "rigor." Ironically, for convenience, testing (aka science) is used in computer programming even though formal analysis is a stronger (but more challenging) form of proof. Science on the other hand is more evidence based. If evidence contradicts logic than the evidence takes precedence. The medical field is more science than it is logic hence the distinction. A computer programmer can use heavier reliance on axiomatic reasoning to derive statements but the medical field will defer more to the black box statistical results of evidence. The difference is literally the same difference between math and science. Computer Programming blurs the line a bit but overall programming is closer to axiomatic reasoning than it is to science.

Geminidog 6y ago

Agreed. There's a dichotomy here that a lot of people don't know about that might help you get a better picture of the distinction you mention. Logic and Science are different in the sense that Logic does not require any evidence. Logic uses simple assumptions called axioms and then theorems derived from those axioms to make broader statements about the system. A computer is basically a system molded around logic so that you can use logical reasoning to derive statements and ignore evidence. This is what I mean by "rigor." Ironically, for convenience, testing (aka science) is used in computer programming even though formal analysis is a stronger (but more challenging) form of proof. Science on the other hand is more evidence based. If evidence contradicts logic than the evidence takes precedence. The medical field is more science than it is logic hence the distinction. A computer programmer can use heavier reliance on axiomatic reasoning to derive statements but the medical field will defer more to the black box statistical results of evidence. The difference is literally the same difference between math and science. Computer Programming blurs the line a bit but overall programming is closer to axiomatic reasoning than it is to science.