Codex on permissions

I think there should be no contradictions in the COdex.

In the codex it says
“files all need to be owned by the user under which your Apache server executes”
from http://codex.wordpress.org/Updating_WordPress
“All files should be owned by your user account on your web server, and should be writable by your username. Files should never be owned by the webserver process itself (sometimes this is www, or apache, or nobody).”
from http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions
and there is more information in Hardening WordPress.
Is there a contradiction? Please explain or resolve.