One theory these days might be that old, boring technology is better represented in the training data for AI models...
Choose Boring Technology (2015)
91–100 of 269 posts
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#92Well, I've not tried to publish this on HN so far, but I guess given such a counterpoint, I should at least attempt to share: https://www.iankduncan.com/engineering/2026-08-07-getting-fr...
I'm reminded of my father in law, who when asked what superpower he'd want, it was flight, so he could get to work without waiting in traffic. If all of your employees are AI's, clarity of vision trumps choosing boring. And if you're having boring visions... well the world is already full of competition for you, so good luck I guess.
It’s easier to imagine a super power than the end of capitalism, apparently.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#93[dead]
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#94[dead]
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Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#95The problem with this is that the list of tech that gets boring changes all time, faster than people's opinions. Kubernetes is very boring tech, but if you go through the old discussion threads on this (even from the last year or two), Kubernetes is still cited as some brand new wizbang thing you shouldn't spend tokens on.
Over 12 years of popular usage at this point. I still think it's inappropriate for ~90% of the companies using it.
Ideally a techthat is not core to the business goals should neither occupy dev/ops time managing it or be so complex that its failure modes are cryptic. It should get out of the devs way and be easy to grok in case of failures.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#96[dead]
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#97I'll push back against this, despite it being so popular. I dislike the arbitrary "innovation tokens" and I think this entire concept really blurs the lines and feels sort of unserious. Engineers should understand requirements, risks, tradeoffs, and potential gains. New technology may be right for that. Novel approaches may be right for that. "Novel" or "New" are only proxies and they're weak. For example, I may thin…
> I'll push back against this, despite it being so popular. I dislike the arbitrary "innovation tokens" It’s a cute way of saying that you can only do 2-3 new things. The post is written for an engineer at a startup as a reminder that although it’s green field development, you only have so much runway, so it’s better to focus on what matters instead of trying some new tech because it seems cool. If you’ve ever had to…
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Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#98I love this post. It’s also interesting to revisit in the age of agents. Using the language of the article, I’d say “push all your innovation tokens into agents” is probably a good move. This means the tech your agents work with should all be boring tech. Another way of saying this is “use in-distribution technology”. If agents are substantially better at Rust than Zig, probably you should use Rust, even if Zig is “b…
It's a total tangent but AI being so good at developing rust means that my first impression of seeing a rust project has totally changed. 4 or 5 years ago if I had to weigh up two options and one was written in rust it was almost a sure thing that the program was snappy, fast, reliable and that the author was competant. Now it's a sure fire sign that the project was probably vibe coded. Not saying it can't still be g…
> Now it's a sure fire sign that the project was probably vibe coded.
Groan. That's sad.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#99PHP is boring - but it works.
Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's bad for building your resume. Managers and employees are rewarded for popular thing. Popularity is mostly a function of novelty. So the (social and therefore economic) incentive structure is inversely correlated with choosing boring technology.
I see it as analogous to people are frequently rewarded for putting out the fire instead of preventing the fire.
I've been noticing this as a solo dev. I need to put lots of work into infra and security, and all I get for it is... the thing not blowing up (hopefully!).
The work is invisible, and impossible to "show off", so it's a bit unrewarding and demoralizing. But hey, someone needs to do it!