There are many tips or techniques that are strongly recommended for cooking, but it's hard to know which are evidence based and which are just passed along because that's what people always do.

Which are the tips that need more evidence?

Here are two that I struggle with, about stainless steel pans:

1. Water drop test / leidenfrost

People say that if you get your pan hot enough to get the leidenfrost effect and then add the oil you'll have less problems with sticking. My problem with this is that it means the pan gets very very hot - much hotter than it needs to be for most uses. My other problem is they all say "Look, I'll cook eggs and they won't stick" and those videos either have a ton of cuts, or the eggs stick and you can see the person pushing with a spatula to get rid of the stick, or their "scrambled eggs" is really a chopped omelette.

2. Heat the pan before adding oil. I don't understand this. Again, people say it helps prevent sticking, but they use some argument about "pores" which just feels hokey. I add cold oil to a cold pan and bring it up to temperature before adding food so the pan and oil are both at the right temperature, and food sticks and then releases, because that's how stainless pans work.

I'm aware I could be completely wrong here and that there may be a good evidence base for these, but they don't seem to work based on how I cook.

I went to university for computer science up until the pandemic started. It was great. I remember working on so many projects that were basic but a lot of fun and others that were a lot more complex but still fun and rewarding. For example, one of the staples of beginner projects is Conway's Game of Life. I remember building that in HTML, CSS, and Java Script. One of my other favorite projects was a website for alum to visit to see alumni news and events, and also to lookup other alum.

What were your favorite projects when learning to code?