Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#1

Post by dpcx » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 3:44 AM UTC

Choose Boring Technology (2015)
mcfunley.com

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#2

Post by whymauri » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

Prior discussion from when the blog was originally written:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291215

A related page I recall seeing on HN last summer:

http://boringtechnology.club/

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#3

Post by smabie » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

If I use APL and Lisp, does that count as spending innovation tokens? Is boring technology old, or is it widely used? Most people I know don't consider J, kdb+/q, Haskell, or OCaml boring, but they are all awesome industrial strength languages/technologies.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#4

Post by MattGaiser » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

This makes sense until I need to find a new job in 18 months.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#5

Post by aaronbrethorst » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

Five years ago I posted a comment on this same article, which you can read at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291437

I still stand by everything I said in that comment, and it has served me incredibly well on every project I've worked on since. At least in the cases where I followed my own advice :-\

tl;dr: if you're trying to build and ship something quickly, don't use any new technology. If you want to use your project as an excuse to learn a new technology, limit yourself to only one technology so you can better isolate issues when they crop up.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#6

Post by barbs » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

(2015)

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#7

Post by WrtCdEvrydy » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #4

This makes sense until I need to find a new job in 18 months.

To be honest... someone who says 'I built it on something that already worked' is probably not that bad in today's market.

There are three classes of companies: ones who haven't tried having a buffet of technologies, ones who already have and ones who are recovering.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#8

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#9

Post by Throwaway8588 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

Except the most employable technology keeps changing every few years.

TypeScript and Go and Rust are the hot ones now and they were barely on the radar a year ago.

Ofc I am inserting them into work projects as I need to learn them.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#10

Post by noncoml » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

I thought MongoDB and NodeJS are the boring technology today...

Edit: Oh, it needs a (2015)