Best practices guides, useful resources or not?

The effectiveness of any "how-to" manual depends entirely on the quality of the underlying practices that helped its creation. When guides are built upon field-tested, and continuously refined best practices, they become powerful tools that can help people become competent practitioners. 

These practices must come from real-world experience and deep understanding of both the subject matter and its audience. 

Without this solid foundation, guides are mere collections of steps that may work in ideal circumstances but crumble when faced with the complexities of a real implementation. 

The best practices must account for skill levels amd also for edge cases.
When guides are constructed outside these established guidelines, they become counterproductive obstacles rather than helpful resources. 

Such guides might skip crucial introductory steps, assume knowledge that the reader doesn't possess, or provide solutions that only work under very specific conditions. 

Poorly constructed guides can instill false confidence, leading users to believe that they understand subjects they don't, potentially creating dangerous situations or reinforcing bad habits that are difficult to unlearn.

The creation of truly helpful guides requires a disciplined approach that begins with identifying best practices through observation, expert consultation, and testing. 

This means involving experts who have dealt with challenges in the field, who understand the most common failures, and could design a guidance that progressively builds competence  rather than just providing quick fixes. 

The best guides also teach you how to adapt their instructions to different contexts. 

They acknowledge their own limitations and provide indicators of when professional help is needed.

They also include a troubleshooting section that addresses real problems users actually encounter. 

Without this foundation, guides become shallow instruction that may provide temporary solutions but fail to build lasting competence or understanding.