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I am a proponent of "choosing boring technologies", but I don't see how it relates to building innovative products and services. You can create an innovative pr

I am a proponent of "choosing boring technologies", but I don't see how it relates to building innovative products and services. You can create an innovative product or service using boring technologies under the hood. I really like the post otherwise.

mattgreenrocks 3y ago
Younger devs conflate tech choices with innovation. They’ll believe that a computer vision company is a dinosaur because they’re using C++ and a glorified CRUD startup is hip and relevant because it uses Rust. It doesn’t help that the anemic-ness of some domains doesn’t set in until 1-2 years later.
- kritr 3y ago
  Using newer technologies sometimes buys development velocity, which is a good indication of innovation.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    Or it makes development slower due to lack of documentation, support, and libraries for the chosen technology.
    - threeseed 3y ago
      There are plenty of boring languages that have poor documentation, support and libraries. Often it's all just out of date.
- BlackFly 3y ago
  I agree that novel technical choices are often conflated with innovation over eagerly. My experience is that in learning the lesson that these things are different many people over correct and assume that novel technical choices are only ever resume padding or useless hype. There are no silver bullets and the only way to get an order of magnitude improvement is iterated marginal improvements. That something is at best a marginal improvement shouldn't be taken for a lack of innovation.
feoren 3y ago
I think the article is a good response to the question the student asked, though: > "As a principal engineer, how do you make sure your company stays at the forefront of innovation?" This is most likely about using all the shiny new technologies in a rapidly changing "forefront of innovation". The article simply isn't about building innovative products and services. Of course, choosing boring technologies is one of the ways that you can help save engineering brain-cycles for the actual innovative core product or service you're building.
js8 3y ago
Yeah, I favor a slightly different rule. Choose a conservative technology in places which are not a core competency of your new product. Building a new product is risky, and you should minimize the additional risk coming from a technology choice, except the parts where you're actually trying to beat the competition. That should be the focal point of innovation.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  As most companies aren't pure tech, usually the core competency isn't the software itself. Sometimes when it is, it's hidden away (for instance, background processing of data) and the best thing you can do is keep as easy to reason about as possible.
- ngrilly 3y ago
  Totally agree. That's why I like the notion of "innovation tokens", also mentioned in the seminal post "Choose Boring Technologies" [1]. You choose boring technologies for everything, except for a few topics that will differentiate your solution, where you get to spend your "innovation tokens". [1] https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
bdcravens 3y ago
It also applies to trying to avoid being clever with the tech you choose.

mattgreenrocks 3y ago

Younger devs conflate tech choices with innovation. They’ll believe that a computer vision company is a dinosaur because they’re using C++ and a glorified CRUD startup is hip and relevant because it uses Rust. It doesn’t help that the anemic-ness of some domains doesn’t set in until 1-2 years later.

kritr 3y ago
Using newer technologies sometimes buys development velocity, which is a good indication of innovation.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  Or it makes development slower due to lack of documentation, support, and libraries for the chosen technology.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    There are plenty of boring languages that have poor documentation, support and libraries. Often it's all just out of date.
BlackFly 3y ago
I agree that novel technical choices are often conflated with innovation over eagerly. My experience is that in learning the lesson that these things are different many people over correct and assume that novel technical choices are only ever resume padding or useless hype. There are no silver bullets and the only way to get an order of magnitude improvement is iterated marginal improvements. That something is at best a marginal improvement shouldn't be taken for a lack of innovation.

feoren 3y ago

I think the article is a good response to the question the student asked, though: > "As a principal engineer, how do you make sure your company stays at the forefront of innovation?" This is most likely about using all the shiny new technologies in a rapidly changing "forefront of innovation". The article simply isn't about building innovative products and services. Of course, choosing boring technologies is one of the ways that you can help save engineering brain-cycles for the actual innovative core product or service you're building.

js8 3y ago

Yeah, I favor a slightly different rule. Choose a conservative technology in places which are not a core competency of your new product. Building a new product is risky, and you should minimize the additional risk coming from a technology choice, except the parts where you're actually trying to beat the competition. That should be the focal point of innovation.

bdcravens 3y ago
As most companies aren't pure tech, usually the core competency isn't the software itself. Sometimes when it is, it's hidden away (for instance, background processing of data) and the best thing you can do is keep as easy to reason about as possible.
ngrilly 3y ago
Totally agree. That's why I like the notion of "innovation tokens", also mentioned in the seminal post "Choose Boring Technologies" [1]. You choose boring technologies for everything, except for a few topics that will differentiate your solution, where you get to spend your "innovation tokens". [1] https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

bdcravens 3y ago

It also applies to trying to avoid being clever with the tech you choose.