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We Shouldn't Call Them Best Practices—And Blindly Follow Them

Cesar Aguirre on June 16, 2025

I originally posted this post on my blog. We, as coders, take pride in preaching and following best practices. Don't write SQL, use an ORM. Do...
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Ravavyr

There are no best practices or standards in web development.
Just a whole lotta "experienced and not-so-experienced opinions" that people push upon each other.

If it works, and it hasn't been hacked... you win.

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Cesar Aguirre

Just a whole lotta "experienced and not-so-experienced opinions" that people push upon each other.

Love this take.

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david duymelinck • Edited

It is called best practices, not must do's.
Like everything it are just opinions, like you have yourself.

Their only claim to fame is that many people tried them and they proofed their worth.
But as you mention not all best practices fit in every situation. That is like wanting to push a circle through a square hole.

In the case of the application, first do the low hanging fruit like DRYing the code and make names meaningful. And then make a plan to tackle the pain points. And further in the future make the code easier to maintain.

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Cesar Aguirre

In the case of the application, first do the low hanging fruit like DRYing the code, make names meaningful. And then make a plan to tackle the pain points. And further in the future make the code easier to maintain.

Love this take. That sounds like a good plan to tackle a modernization project. Thanks for sharing.

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Baltasar García Perez-Schofield

Very true! Before a complete rewrite, let's do what we can really do.

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Cesar Aguirre

That's right, Baltasar. That was a lesson that took me a long time to learn. As a junior/mid-level, my urge was to rewrite everything to "make it right"

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Baltasar García Perez-Schofield

I know that urge. That feeling is a bad advisor...

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Shrijal Acharya

This is very true, and often trying to build a project with all the best practices is what prevents many beginners from even starting.

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Cesar Aguirre

Exaclty! It's make it work and only then make it clean and fast

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Ashish Prajapati

Yaa I agree with you. Most of the devs just read the practices(best practices) from internet and do it blindly without even doing proper understanding of it.

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Cesar Aguirre

I declared myself guilty too :)

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Testfeed

nice!

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Sebastian Schürmann

i de-spice them by calling them 'good practices' and try to avoid the best term as well. That leaves much more room for interpretation.

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Cesar Aguirre

That's a good alternative, Sebastian!

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