Couple of things I can rattle off: It takes a lot of work to make a technology production-ready. I've seen MySQL go from being derided as a toy database, to po

Couple of things I can rattle off: It takes a lot of work to make a technology production-ready. I've seen MySQL go from being derided as a toy database, to powering some of the largest, highest scale consumer apps out there. It took years of work from both the core teams, and many contributions out there from people working with it every day to make that possible. It's important for engineers to know their history when they pitch the latest tech they read about on HN and ask why they can't use it on a new project at work. The fact that you can get it up and running isn't enough, you need to be able to keep it running. If you aren't willing to put in that work, then don't pitch the tech. Secondly, emergent architectures are often more resilient than deliberate architectures. Frameworks and platforms extracted out of real products tend to have more longevity behind them than those that are deliberately designed to solve a multitude of needs from day one. If it doesn't feel right to bring a library or platform in to solve your problem (rather than build something yourself), then don't do it. You might find yourself spending more time fighting the platform or bending it to your will than by building something by yourself.