Do I need to use The Loop on pages?

Question

I'm writing my first WordPress theme and have a question about the use of The Loop in page templates. The page templates I've looked at all follow basically the same pattern (example from Twenty Twelve):

<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<?php get_template_part( 'content', 'page' ); ?>
<?php comments_template( '', true ); ?>
<?php endwhile; // end of the loop. ?>

But a page will only have one post associated with it so iterating through the posts seems unnecessary. My page template is more readable and seems to work fine:

<?php
the_post();
the_title('<h1>', '</h1>');
the_content();
?>

Is this a good practice? Are there any downsides?

Answer 1

According to the Theme Guide, full loops should be used, even on single templates.

Full loops must be used in all templates. Just calling the_post() in a template like single.php or page.php is not enough.

So yes, it's a best practice to use full loops.

Answer 2

The only potential (edit: functional) issue I see is that the loop_end action won't get called if you don't call have_posts() after the last the_post(), so anything hooked to that action won't run.

In practice, I've been doing it that way in bespoke client themes and have never encountered an issue, but it depends on what plugins may be used and whether or not they hook anything on loop_end.