There are probably a ton of definitions of what a best practice is in SE. When it comes to code, I like to think best practices are those that make code easier

There are probably a ton of definitions of what a best practice is in SE. When it comes to code, I like to think best practices are those that make code easier to change and understand, without significantly compromising performance. Developers who mainly target high performance with their code probably think my best practices suck, and so on. At a practical level, what really matters is consensus within an organization. Organizations where people hold incompatible ideas of what good engineering is are basically doomed.