The exciting choice and the right choice are rarely the same. A simple framework for picking technology you'll still be glad about next year.
Picking a tech stack is one of those decisions that feels reversible and mostly isn't. The cost of a wrong call doesn't show up at the start — it shows up a year in, as friction on every single change. So we optimize less for what's exciting today and more for what's survivable later.
Boring is a competitive advantage
Mature, widely-used tools come with something shiny ones can't: answered questions. When you hit a wall at 2am, you want the error message to have ten thousand search results, not zero. Novelty is a cost you pay continuously.
- Will we be able to hire people who already know this in a year?
- When it breaks, how quickly can we find out why?
- Does it have a clear upgrade path, or are we signing up for a rewrite later?
- Is the team excited for the right reasons — or just because it's new?
Choose technology your future, more tired self will thank you for.
Leave room for one bet
None of this means never trying anything new. It means being deliberate: keep the foundation boring and dependable, and spend your innovation budget on the one or two places where a newer tool genuinely sets the product apart. Stability everywhere, novelty where it counts.