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I see your point here, but I want represent a counterpoint to this line of reasoning, from my personal experience. I've been in a lot of situations where someon
by aard 2y ago
I see your point here, but I want represent a counterpoint to this line of reasoning, from my personal experience. I've been in a lot of situations where someone simply wants their way--in this case they want the organization to choose their personal software preference--and so they call it the "boring" choice.
By calling it boring, they characterize their _preference_ as the majority accepted, mature, obvious decision and anything else is merely software engineers chasing shiny objects. The truth is almost always more nuanced. Both solutions have pros and cons. They trade-off different values that resonate more or less with different people.
So, please be careful with the "it's boring and therefore obviously better" argument. Don't let it be a way to summarily dismiss someone else's preferences in favor of your own--without a deeper discussion of trade-offs. Otherwise it's no better than any other condescending attempt (ex. I'm in charge, so we are doing it this way. No one ever got fired choosing IBM/Microsoft/..) to win an argument without having to present real arguments.
- kubb 2y agoDemagogy is MUCH better than real arguments. Most people you work with will have trouble even understanding the latter. They don't have time, they're overloaded, their kids are waiting at home. Give them the warm feeling that they're doing the right thing. Make them feel smart, experienced, elite. That's how you get support, not by appealing to (ugh) reason.
- DavidPiper 2y agoIt's hard to tell whether you're clearly joking from the perspective of an engineer, or clearly serious from the perspective of an org leader.
- whstl 2y agoYep. A lot of people are doing this in this topic. Anything that makes money is boring, anything that they like is boring, another poster saying that "boring tech stacks tend to be highly scalable". By tomorrow we'll have people saying boring tech also brings world peace and cures world hunger. The "boring" meme is just a conversation killer.
- paulddraper 2y agoE.g. Java is boring. But I would suggest that Kotlin gets you all the "boring advantages" of Java, with feature adds.
- citrin_ru 2y ago> be careful with the "it's boring and therefore obviously better" argument The same way I would say be wary an argument which can be boiled down to "it's newer so it's obviously better". I used to made such argument myself in the beginning of my career but now I see that proffering everything new is a bad strategy. Comparing software objectively is hard (if not impossible), and there is a place for personal presences too. But if after a discussion of pros and cons it's not obvious which of two options is significantly better I would be inclined to choose an older and more established technology.
- mybazongas 2y agoI think people are just tired of arguing with people who think you need, say, an entire cluster orchestration system, and a renderer inside your renderer just to serve up some web pages. It's a lot easier to just tell people to use "boring technology". The ones who get it, get it.