N.C. pins, Not Connect pins

Chips are designed by one team, datasheets and appnotes are written by another one and support is provided by yet another one. Naturally there are miscommunications in between. Thus the differences in recommendations. And it's made even worse by some companies explicitly concealing important design-related data that they treat as "intellectual property".

Well, I guess we simply have to deal with it by acquiring experience with particular component families and knowing their shortcomings.