perhaps it's really related to the word "Best" and wouldn't be as bad with "Good" but i've found that these things, more often than not, are neither. "Best Practice" is just a concise reformulation of "this has been blogged about a lot and everybody else seems to be doing it", it's an incantation intended to shutdown brains and differing views. i'm just moving off a job in a company full of "Best Practices" that cost shitloads of effort in exchange for negligible benefits. nobody stopped to weigh the pros against the cons, because they're industry best practices, so they gotta be good; doing what everybody else does gets you more job offers than doing what works well.