I have come to believe that by and large "best practices" are actively harmful as they're mostly pounded by inexperienced programmers who lack the ability to judge the applicability or zealots who believe everything should be done the One True Way™, and they (ab)use these kind of "best practices" as an argument from authority. Everyone else just says "X is better because Y", which is an actual argument that can be discussed (engaging with actual arguments discovers what the best solution for the particular situation is).

Most "best practices" are just someone's opinion anyway, and little more. The exception to this are some things like "don't use mktemp(), use mkstemp()", but these are usually not called "best practices" but "footguns" or "things that will get you in to trouble sooner or later".