> resist the pressures to provide huge scale You and I completely agree on this: huge scale is a irrational target out of the gate for most projects. The pote

> resist the pressures to provide huge scale You and I completely agree on this: huge scale is a irrational target out of the gate for most projects. The potential for huge scale preoccupies many an architect whose aspirations exceed their budget, to say nothing of their market reality. A premature preoccupation with huge scale tends to yield over-engineered systems that are needlessly complex and work against all of the goals you cite: simplicity and the ability to react quickly to changing business needs. It seems my addition here is reduced to this: All else being equal—if your team is equally comfortable with two technology options—selecting the platform with a higher performance ceiling will further defer the architectural complexity typically associated with scale. Architectural complexity (e.g., multiple languages, lots of orchestrated or inter-dependent processes, many abstraction layers, complex deployments) tends to be the friction force against the simplicity, speed, and agility we both seek.