Your proposition might be bleeding edge, your tech doesn’t need to be. Go with well-known, battle-tested technology.

Both start-ups and established orgs frequently fall into the trap of chasing the latest trends and opting for cutting-edge technology. More often than not, they later find themselves burdened with complex stacks that are not fit for purpose and hard to maintain.

Here’s the thing: unless you’re operating at a mega scale or working in a very specific niche, you can accomplish nearly everything you need with tech that’s been popular for decades. The benefit? They’re well-known, well-supported, and it’s easier to find engineers who are familiar with them.

🚨 The Trade-off Trap 🪤
When assessing new tech, many developers overlook the trade-offs. They get caught up in the allure of the problems the new tech will solve, without understanding the new ones it might introduce.

🚨 The Re-write Trap 🕸️
When the opportunity to re-write something arises, the temptation to choose shiny new tech is strong. However, more often than not, the tech stack wasn’t the core issue. The main reasons are typically out of support frameworks and languages, and an architecture and codebase that have become too complex to maintain. By opting for unfamiliar tech, you risk complicating your re-write even further. 🚧

Common examples 🔍
– Choosing NoSQL databases over traditional relational databases
– Overcommitting to a microservices architecture
– Going all-in with a serverless architecture like AWS Lambda
– Opting for GraphQL over more traditional REST-like APIs
– Dare I even begin when it comes to front end web frameworks 🥺

While all these choices have their merits, they are best suited for specific use cases and you need to know what they are.

Innovation 💡 in your product or service is where your focus should be, not in the technology that supports it. By choosing reliable, common technology, orgs can avoid unnecessary complexity, freeing up more time and resources for what really matters: solving real-world problems and growing their business.