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Be a bit boring

Choose Boring Technology is a really interesting piece I read at the start of the year, and a lot of it rang true to me.

You need to decide if they're making a Formula One car, or are they going to put all their effort into building the test track that is used to test it? You don't have time to do both well.

React is pretty good. It's not perfect, but do you really want to be responsible for maintaining a whole front end project, or do you want to focus on solving user problems?

Factors to look for​

When deciding what technology to use, here are some metrics I look for:

  • community (how much support does it have)
  • when was it last updated? How frequently do new releases come out?
  • what do people say?
  • ask friends for their view.
  • how long has the product been going?

Whilst it may be appealing to use a fresh technology stack, it's worth first considering the following:

  • Is that stack going to be supported long term? I was on a project that had gone all in on a particular NoSQL database, which couldn't find market traction, so discontinued support around 2016. Whilst it is still using that to this day, it is not great to have data sitting in an unsupported tool.

NoSQL vs SQL​

GraphQL vs REST​

React vs something else​

Something else is a brave move. Whilst there are plenty of arguments why React may not be the best front end library, there are strong commercial reasons to use it. The most imp Firstly, employing developers