Choose Boring Technology (2015)
Article URL: https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289512 Points: 230 # Comments: 121
The most significant thing that happened to the author in their career was having Kellan in charge. Kellan's technical decision-making proved fruitful, and the author learned a great deal from it. Kellan ensured the landing of technology choices, allowing the author to become a proficient engineer. Since leaving Etsy, the author has regained interest in technology and crystallized their thoughts into coherent writing.
The article discusses the concept of "Choose Boring Technology," which aims to prevent wasting innovation tokens on unnecessary choices. Investing in technologies like NodeJS, MongoDB, or service discovery tools that are relatively new can hinder progress. Mature technologies like MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, Python, Memcached, Squid, and Cron are stable and well-understood.
The author argues that choosing boring technologies is a good bias, but not the only factor to consider. Adding new technology comes with costs, such as complexity and cognitive overhead. The author emphasizes the importance of balancing business problems with software choices, considering long-term costs, and fostering a culture of discussion around technology decisions.
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