Every few months, a new framework promises to change everything. And every few months, I watch teams rewrite working systems to chase that promise.
I've been guilty of it too. The pull of the new is strong in our industry. But I've learned something over years of shipping software: boring is a feature, not a bug.
The Hidden Cost of Shiny
New technology carries debt you can't see on day one. The documentation is sparse. The edge cases are undiscovered. The community knowledge that helps you debug at 2am doesn't exist yet.
When you choose something proven, you're not just choosing the technology. You're choosing the thousands of Stack Overflow answers, the battle-tested patterns, the engineers who've already made your mistakes.
When New Makes Sense
I'm not arguing for stagnation. Sometimes new tools solve problems that old tools genuinely can't. The question is whether your problem is actually that problem, or whether you're inventing complexity to justify the interesting choice.
"The best technology decision is often the most boring one you can get away with."
A Framework for Choosing
Before adopting something new, I ask three questions:
- What specific problem does this solve that my current tools can't?
- Who will maintain this in two years, and will they thank me?
- Am I excited because it's better, or because it's new?
The third question is the hardest to answer honestly. But it's the most important one.