“Best Practices”…Awful…or just irrelevant?

I’ve been having a discussion on Twitter with some folks about the “best practices” term…many people hate it.  The argument against it is:

• “Best” compared to what?  Best that’s ever been?  Seems fairly high-minded to call something “best”
• There’s no context.  Practices are more or less suitable depending on their context
• Calling a practice “best” invites contention because it is also a statement about the inferiority of other practices

Here’s my response:

• I think anytime you use qualitative terms (“best”, “good”, “practice i like”), there’s subjectivity involved, and deifnitions are imprecise.  So unless we want to throw out all subjectivity (which seems impractical), we have to live with the ambiguity
• I generally use “best practice” as shorthand for “the best practice we as a team can devise, given our current situation.”  “Best practice” is just shorter.  I guess you could just say “practice”, which would be fine.
• I just don’t think it matters much.  I’ve never, ever been on a software project where the use of the “best practice” term caused a heated debate or caused software to ship later or with less quality.  So, it seems to me to be a quest for preciseness for preciseness’ sake.

Those are my thoughts…I’d be interested in hearing others…