Baking, you put exactly x of this, y of that, and z of whozits, and mix for two minutes precisely and bake at a given temperature for a specific amount of time and it comes out perfectly. Screw up one thing and your dog will not touch it.
In cooking, the recipe is more or less a suggestion as to how it should be done. You do it by eye and taste and season incrementally. I had a cooking teacher hold out her hand and indicated her palm saying, "This is exactly one teaspoon". The recipe tells you what the ingredients are and approximately in what proportion. It just gets you through the first time, and if you are not taste testing the food as you are cooking to see if it is coming out how you like it, you should probably replace the cook with someone who cares.
I have some signature dishes down that I can reproduce the same way every time. Chilly, on the other paw, vary depending on season and weather. Winter, cold and gloomy, I make with a lot of chipotle pepper an cayenne for a darker flavor. Summer and spring chilly has a lot of fresh chilly peppers an a much lighter flavor. Tastes for times, horses for courses. Cooking is fun, and art if you're really into it. There are no hard rules except you don't put oil or butter into a cold pot, and you don't cut fingers off while chopping.

Just my $0.02