Best Malpractices

"I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." -- Richard Feynman

With that in mind, here's a well-reasoned rant against Best Practices. The IT world is replete with buffoons - programmers, managers, CS students, whatever - who toss around terms like AJAX, ORM, XP/Agile, Web 2.0, RDBMS, DRY, NIH, and OOP without ever pausing to ask the real questions. What do they mean? What do they do? Where do they succeed - and where do they fall short?

Consider this: Google does not follow Best Practices. They solve problems. Period.