All of those things being "better" include an implicit "...in the context which these best practices were studied" which usually means large teams of just-OK programmers writing Java code that mostly doesn't need to perform very well but will be changed a lot, and needs to be very consistent in style and pattern so that when an intern comes in and pokes it as his first commit he can't do any serious damage.

You can imagine a million ways those assumptions break down, as well as a million ways they seem to but should actually be stuck to. Knowing the difference is the tough part.