"Best Practices" is a marketing trick. The fact of the matter is that software engineering (and programming, which I consider to be a technically separate subfield) is still coming out of its alchemy stage. We're someplace between the pre-jouleian thermodynamics and phlogiston phase. Like, it's better than wizards sitting in dark rooms experimenting with things which normal minds were not meant to see. However, we've got a bunch of rules that are either flat out wrong or almost definitely wrong.
So, we can either tell everyone that we're currently riding on a train built by crazy wizards and we're just now figuring out all the stuff we don't know. OR we can hype things up a bit to keep the muggles from freaking out too much.
Personally, I would like to just get by in life by telling the truth. However, many of my more successful peers are able to achieve much more than me by dressing up what they're doing with a good sounding story. Part of that is "best practices". I don't really like it, but I have a hard time begrudging them because it looks suspiciously that everyone knows what's going on and in fact are comforted by the language usage.
The other side of this is that author wants to replace 'best practice' with 'pattern'. Honestly, I don't see what the difference is. I doubt you can actually define that term so that it's any better. And the true hucksters (given 5 minutes) can find out how to spin 'pattern' to be just as problematic (if not more so) than 'best practice'. "I don't like the words you use. Use the words I like!" is a position that I'm rarely going to get behind. Like, from my point of view people are just making a bunch of noises from their mouths either way.
The second one is the assertion that if you can't explain it then you're cargo cult-ing. I don't like it when people can't explain what they're doing. I've been plagued by it for my whole career. Someone suggests something. It makes zero sense to me. I probe with questions. Eventually I hit the bedrock of their knowledge and there's still an embarrassing amount of blank lines still lying around. However, they're still able to be productive.
The very idea of "experience" is that you've got some know-how which you're unable to explain. If you could explain it, then it would be "technique". And this is something that permeates our lives. Like, how are you even reading this right now? Can you actually explain how your brain is recognizing letters, words, sentences, ideas? You're definitely not cargo cult-ing as you read this. The whole basis of ML is that we don't actually know how to explain a bunch of stuff to the computer so we just find clever ways of throwing statistics at the problem.
I find the cargo cult assertion wrong. Even though I really don't like it when people are unable to adequately explain what they're doing and/or telling others to do.
"Best Practices" is a marketing trick. The fact of the matter is that software engineering (and programming, which I consider to be a technically separate subfield) is still coming out of its alchemy stage. We're someplace between the pre-jouleian thermodynamics and phlogiston phase. Like, it's better than wizards sitting in dark rooms experimenting with things which normal minds were not meant to see. However, we've got a bunch of rules that are either flat out wrong or almost definitely wrong.
So, we can either tell everyone that we're currently riding on a train built by crazy wizards and we're just now figuring out all the stuff we don't know. OR we can hype things up a bit to keep the muggles from freaking out too much.
Personally, I would like to just get by in life by telling the truth. However, many of my more successful peers are able to achieve much more than me by dressing up what they're doing with a good sounding story. Part of that is "best practices". I don't really like it, but I have a hard time begrudging them because it looks suspiciously that everyone knows what's going on and in fact are comforted by the language usage.
The other side of this is that author wants to replace 'best practice' with 'pattern'. Honestly, I don't see what the difference is. I doubt you can actually define that term so that it's any better. And the true hucksters (given 5 minutes) can find out how to spin 'pattern' to be just as problematic (if not more so) than 'best practice'. "I don't like the words you use. Use the words I like!" is a position that I'm rarely going to get behind. Like, from my point of view people are just making a bunch of noises from their mouths either way.
The second one is the assertion that if you can't explain it then you're cargo cult-ing. I don't like it when people can't explain what they're doing. I've been plagued by it for my whole career. Someone suggests something. It makes zero sense to me. I probe with questions. Eventually I hit the bedrock of their knowledge and there's still an embarrassing amount of blank lines still lying around. However, they're still able to be productive.
The very idea of "experience" is that you've got some know-how which you're unable to explain. If you could explain it, then it would be "technique". And this is something that permeates our lives. Like, how are you even reading this right now? Can you actually explain how your brain is recognizing letters, words, sentences, ideas? You're definitely not cargo cult-ing as you read this. The whole basis of ML is that we don't actually know how to explain a bunch of stuff to the computer so we just find clever ways of throwing statistics at the problem.
I find the cargo cult assertion wrong. Even though I really don't like it when people are unable to adequately explain what they're doing and/or telling others to do.