[casenelson]

I have a copy of Code Complete on my desk, it is 915 pages long. The techniques in there have been gathered from years of experience and research. There's no way I'll ever absorb all of the knowledge in there, but some of it may stick. When I write code I might unconsciously pick out a technique from the book, yet later on I'll miss the opportunity to apply the same technique again. If I better understood what I was doing the first time, I'd be more aware of it later.

Now, you're right, the easiest questions (as in the article) to answer can and should be encoded in standards document. But there are many many questions to ask and some are highly dependent on context and don't belong in standards documents. Maybe some of the existing standards that you thought you understood are really just there by convention and could be improved.