I’m intrigued by the distinction between best practice and standard practice. Isn’t it standard because it’s the best? I can understand that non-standard practices might be best in niche situations, but this sounds like a discussion of “traditions are solutions to problems so old we’ve forgotten what they were”.
My read is that a standard industry practice (e.g. considering programmers interchangeable pieces and that components should be designed with that in mind) will work in many situations, and therefore the "standard" is reasonable for most of them, but the best practice is context-sensitive; in this case, the context didn't require C++/Java and they were actually not good choices. This was specialized, mission-critical software developed on a tight schedule and swapping programmers in/out of the project simply wouldn't work, so many considerations for choosing (say) Java were out of the question.
There is not such thing as a best practice without specifying a context. The kind of build hygiene required for long-lived commercial product is very different from disposable marketing content. This is especially toxic when the underlying context and goals are so different.
Businesses wants interchangeable programmers for many reasons: so they can ramp team size up and down, so hiring is easy, etc. But the number one reason in my experience is to minimize the bargaining power of the programmers. Execs absolutely _hate_ having star programmers holding them up for raises. Building complicated in-house tooling in a language like lisp might make it rain, but the devs are then in a position to demand a slice. Procurement 101 is always have secondary vendors to keep your main vendors honest. Lower productivity is an acceptable price to avoid being held up.
This is a very different context from somewhere like JPL where any programmer there could already leave for more money in industry. Anyone there is already committed to the mission. The cost of lower productivity isn't justified, and might make certain activities simply impossible given the current budgets.
> There is not such thing as a best practice without specifying a context.
Just to be clear: we are in agreement, right? The author of TFA is stating this, and that the JPL misunderstood its own context. It wasn't the kind of business/project where your second paragraph applies, and so the practices they adopted were mistmatched.
Phillips head screws are pretty standard in the US, but pretty much any other non-slot screw head is technically superior (including at least two other plus shaped drivers I'm aware of).
Most woodworkers I've known prefer a square shaped driver. Unless the costs of the screw significantly impact your margins, Phillips screws suck.
I felt this way through my entire engineering life until I bought a sailboat.
Everything on marine stuff tends to be flat-head or similar design -- engaging a flat driver into a slot in a bumpy/roll-y ocean is hell. The self-centering engagement aspect of a cross-socket style drive is absolutely fantastic after a long day of trying to tighten flat-slot fastened tube-clamps and the like at sea during calm conditions, let alone during weather.
That said -- yes, phillips head sucks, they round out and won't handle any decent amount of torque over repeated sessions without deformation. Robertson (square)/allen/torx kind of suck at sea, because they lack any form of self-centering without using special taper drivers.
In a perfect world I think that I would like to use pozi-driv fasteners and drivers everywhere, but the reality is that there are so many types of specialty hardware in use in the marine-world that it would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to switch it all entirely over.
But I can definitely think of places with slot-heads on deck of the yachts I have been on, which would be a bitch in swell. And stripping a thread would also suck!
Everything on marine stuff tends to be flat-head or similar design
-- engaging a flat driver into a slot in a bumpy/roll-y ocean is
*hell*.
Off topic: the hell of a bumpy/roll-y ocean manually controlled lift crane arm operation is improved by a single rotating supporting pillar with an expandable webb-y forklift mechanism that goes in the water and retrieves the dive vessel with a one button push and Ai selfguiding.
Yes, they are better than flathead screws, which are the second (or maybe third after a combination philips/flathead[1]) most common screw I encounter in daily use.
I wonder if the prevalence of flat head screws has something to do with ease of machinability. I imagine there's a lot of custom or obscure fasteners on boats. A flat head bolt or screw has the benefit of being able to be made with not much more than a lathe.
