All the cool kids are talking about "Best Practices." I have in my mailbox an offer from Adobe to show me the "Best Practices" for using DreamWeaver. On mailing lists, people no longer ask for the right way or even the best way to solve a problem. They ask, "What is the best practice to accomplish X?" 
 
Two things here. First, "Best Practice" is pretentious. Before they heard the nifty new phrase, the same people would be talking about "the right way," and not feeling the lack of a better term. They say "best practice" because it makes them sound ever-so-professional. 
 
Second, "Best Practice," if it has any distinct meaning, doesn't mean "the right way" or "the best way." It means something different from either. In the law of negligence, a defense against a malpractice or product-liability claim would be that one exercised sufficient care by following the methods of other competent professionals. If everybody else tells their clients to jump off bridges, it isn't negligent for you to do the same. 
 
This is "Best Practices." It's not the right way. It isn't the best way. It is the opposite of the innovative way. It is the cover-your-ass way, the follow-the-herd way. "Best practice" is a weasel-word. 

Posted by: Fritz Anderson