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Choose Boring Technology (2015)

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Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#171

Post by gherkinnn »

monk_grilla wrote: post #135
NickNaraghi wrote: post #3

> Let’s say every company gets about three innovation tokens. You can spend these however you want, but the supply is fixed for a long while. This is one of my favorite blog posts, and it can basically be encapsulated in the idea of "innovation tokens." It is one of the most useful concepts I have had as a PM / eng leader in my career. It helps actually make the the right tradeoffs, and helps even more in explaining…

I also broadly agree with the post. > If you choose to write your website in NodeJS, you just spent one of your innovation tokens. Is NodeJS still considered on the same level of "unknown" / "not-boring" technology as the others listed? By my reckoning it is plenty mature enough to be considered a "boring" choice, and going for bun would be spending and innovation token.

Yes, Node is boring. Its capabilities and failure modes are well understood. And no, installing today's flavour of leftpad is entirely self inflicted. Bun or Deno are definitely a token or two I'd rather spend elsewhere or not at all.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#173

Post by smolder »

Boring technology is great for making things in certain niches. This argument gets used a lot to encourage Java for every purpose, which comes from a myopic view of the landscape of languages. Advocates of many languages use the "least effort with biggest result" claim, and it's out of ignorance.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#174

Post by asalahli »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #86
PyWoody wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not what you're after, but your talk of beans reminded me of Taco Bell Programming. [0] [0] https://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2010/10/taco-bell-progr...

Speaking of beans, here's a classic (totally different from the main topic. Welcome to Topic Creep): https://archive.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/07/08/beans-and-nos...

This was a great read, thanks! I've naively tried to stop too many beans-and-noses situations in the past.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#175

Post by whstl »

anon48293 wrote: post #163
samtheprogram wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an insane take. Anything?!?

Can you name a single thing in the JavaScript ecosystem which has been stable for 10 years?

Express, Lodash, jQuery, require still works, the language itself.

Lots of CSS stuff are still virtually the same, as it only gets additions.

Vue.js API from 10 years ago still works fine in newer versions.

React class components still work. Even Hooks themselves are pushing 7-8 years now.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#177

Post by whstl »

atoav wrote: post #162
monk_grilla wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also broadly agree with the post. > If you choose to write your website in NodeJS, you just spent one of your innovation tokens. Is NodeJS still considered on the same level of "unknown" / "not-boring" technology as the others listed? By my reckoning it is plenty mature enough to be considered a "boring" choice, and going for bun would be spending and innovation token.

I would say depends what you're trying to do? Is NodeJS the simple, solid and rugged way this has been done for a decade now? If not, then it is an innovation. Second it depends on what your or your teams experience level is. Have you ever built a serious thing with it and do you have multiple years of experience running and maintaining it? Yes? Then it is probably the boring choice. Would you be okay with leaving th…

> Second it depends on what your or your teams experience level is.

+1.

I work in a Skunkworks department inside a larger/older company and we recently decided to stop using Python in the future, the company's language.

Node.js, Go, Rust, C#, etc, all of those are extremely boring for us. They're stable and we get things done in minutes. In Python it's like pulling teeth, with constant API changes and refactors from other teams we're struggling to keep up with. Which one is boring? For us, not Python.

The Python developers naturally disagree and say "there must be something wrong with your team if you can't use Python at the same speed and efficacy as us".

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#178

Post by dexterlagan »

Can confirm. Use boring, proven tech at work. Experiment at home, on your own time. Using 'exciting' and new tech is fun but brings risks that are often unacceptable. If the tech dies, you have just created a pile of debt for your business, and potentially years of difficult maintenance and possibly a rewrite ahead. Don't.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#179

Post by ahoka »

anon48293 wrote: post #163
samtheprogram wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an insane take. Anything?!?

Can you name a single thing in the JavaScript ecosystem which has been stable for 10 years?

Can you name a major Java framework or library (that's not abandonware)?

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#180

Post by gdiamos »

In hindsight I disagree.

Instead I like “only work on impossible problems”

Most of them turn out to be impossible, but some of them turn out to be possible.

I’ve never met anyone who could pick 3 and be confident in getting even one right. Tokens are a terrible analogy for innovation or research.

In hindsight I’ve had to sift through hundreds or more to fine one that worked.

I thought this post was helpful when I first started thinking about startups.

After more time, I think boring tech isn’t worth thinking about.

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