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I obviously don't agree that it's useful as a communication tool though. Why not "Use the technology that's appropriate for our use case"? That seems radically

I obviously don't agree that it's useful as a communication tool though. Why not "Use the technology that's appropriate for our use case"? That seems radically better and doesn't suffer from weird misinterpretations or vague terms.

simonw 2mo ago
Because people LOVE COMING UP with excuses to try a new technology under the basis that "this is appropriate for our use-case", and if you don't introduce a concept similar to innovation tokens you may find that six months later your project is combining three different unproven new technologies and doesn't actually work yet. Encouraging your team to be selective in where they place their new bets - and use "boring" aka already-understood technology for the bits that are not going to help solve unique problems - can help avoid expensive mistakes.
- jason_oster 2mo ago
  It does happen, but having the ability to pivot quickly is almost always more valuable than dealing with "the devil you know". There is nothing wrong with evaluating something new and discovering it doesn't work out as expected. That's still a meaningful outcome. Try it, if it doesn't work, replace it. You've learned something in the process, and it's a mistake you won't make again. At some point you have to trust in the scientific method. The hypothesis->test->evaluate->adjust hypothesis cycle hasn't been beaten for thousands of years.
- insanitybit 2mo ago
  People also love coming up with any way to use Postgres or whatever thing they're already familiar with and they get to say "it's boring" like that means anything. > Encouraging your team to be selective in where they place their new bets - and use "boring" aka already-understood technology for the bits that are not going to help solve unique problems - can help avoid expensive mistakes. Or just encourage your team to have rational discussions about technical choices, how is this controversial?
  - simonw 2mo ago
    The boring technology framing is meant to provide a hook to help people "have rational discussions about technical choices". It's a tool for inspiring conversation.
    - insanitybit 2mo ago
      I don't get it. The inspiration is your product requirements, why would I need to say "it's boring" to get things started? I feel like I've been pretty clear. 1. "Boring" is a bad term that obfuscates things that do not merit obfuscation. It's like saying "brb" in person instead of "I'll be back in 5 minutes" - "brb" means nothing to me, 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 30? And it saved you like 2 words? Silly, unserious, and fine for casual conversations but not for technical decisions like "what database do we use?". 2. It lets people lean into a bias. I see massive bias away from "hyped" tech. People on HN constantly condemn projects for being "hype" tech with no merit behind their criticism, or at least no expressed merit. It sounds very smart to say "oh that's just hyped" - this is a known bias that extends outside of tech. Calling something "boring" makes you sound smart but it doesn't convey information and it leads to the exact same decisions that "hype" would. Having a conversation about technology is not hard. It's the job. It's one of the most important parts of the job. It is not worth papering over with some biased wording that is guilty of the same exact failure modes of the approach it attempts to deride.
      - simonw 2mo ago
        I think this entire disagreement is about language, and in particular the implications of the term "boring". The term we are looking for here is something that means: "A piece of technology that has been around for long enough that all of the sharp edges have either been filed off or are well documented and understood. We would not be the first people to solve our particular problem using this stack - in fact we would be using it in a predictable way that many before us have already shown to work. It's widespread enough that many people already know it, both on our existing team and in the pool of people we might want to hire from. We won't get to show off about this - our usage of this technology will not become the thing of legends, or conference talks, or blog posts. Our problems require unique solutions in other areas, but for the bit that accepts incoming web requests and runs some queries against a database we can go with something that's low risk, well established and very unlikely to surprise us." I think boring is a fantastic shortcut for that, especially if you can trust your collaborators to understand it to mean that. If you can't trust your collaborators to understand that then sure, you need to find a different word. A couple of decades ago I helped create Django. One of the achievements I'm most proud of is that Django has graduated over time to being one of the most clear examples of a "boring" technology - it's widely used, stable, reliable, and thoroughly understood.

simonw 2mo ago

Because people LOVE COMING UP with excuses to try a new technology under the basis that "this is appropriate for our use-case", and if you don't introduce a concept similar to innovation tokens you may find that six months later your project is combining three different unproven new technologies and doesn't actually work yet. Encouraging your team to be selective in where they place their new bets - and use "boring" aka already-understood technology for the bits that are not going to help solve unique problems - can help avoid expensive mistakes.

jason_oster 2mo ago
It does happen, but having the ability to pivot quickly is almost always more valuable than dealing with "the devil you know". There is nothing wrong with evaluating something new and discovering it doesn't work out as expected. That's still a meaningful outcome. Try it, if it doesn't work, replace it. You've learned something in the process, and it's a mistake you won't make again. At some point you have to trust in the scientific method. The hypothesis->test->evaluate->adjust hypothesis cycle hasn't been beaten for thousands of years.
insanitybit 2mo ago
People also love coming up with any way to use Postgres or whatever thing they're already familiar with and they get to say "it's boring" like that means anything. > Encouraging your team to be selective in where they place their new bets - and use "boring" aka already-understood technology for the bits that are not going to help solve unique problems - can help avoid expensive mistakes. Or just encourage your team to have rational discussions about technical choices, how is this controversial?
- simonw 2mo ago
  The boring technology framing is meant to provide a hook to help people "have rational discussions about technical choices". It's a tool for inspiring conversation.
  - insanitybit 2mo ago
    I don't get it. The inspiration is your product requirements, why would I need to say "it's boring" to get things started? I feel like I've been pretty clear. 1. "Boring" is a bad term that obfuscates things that do not merit obfuscation. It's like saying "brb" in person instead of "I'll be back in 5 minutes" - "brb" means nothing to me, 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 30? And it saved you like 2 words? Silly, unserious, and fine for casual conversations but not for technical decisions like "what database do we use?". 2. It lets people lean into a bias. I see massive bias away from "hyped" tech. People on HN constantly condemn projects for being "hype" tech with no merit behind their criticism, or at least no expressed merit. It sounds very smart to say "oh that's just hyped" - this is a known bias that extends outside of tech. Calling something "boring" makes you sound smart but it doesn't convey information and it leads to the exact same decisions that "hype" would. Having a conversation about technology is not hard. It's the job. It's one of the most important parts of the job. It is not worth papering over with some biased wording that is guilty of the same exact failure modes of the approach it attempts to deride.
    - simonw 2mo ago
      I think this entire disagreement is about language, and in particular the implications of the term "boring". The term we are looking for here is something that means: "A piece of technology that has been around for long enough that all of the sharp edges have either been filed off or are well documented and understood. We would not be the first people to solve our particular problem using this stack - in fact we would be using it in a predictable way that many before us have already shown to work. It's widespread enough that many people already know it, both on our existing team and in the pool of people we might want to hire from. We won't get to show off about this - our usage of this technology will not become the thing of legends, or conference talks, or blog posts. Our problems require unique solutions in other areas, but for the bit that accepts incoming web requests and runs some queries against a database we can go with something that's low risk, well established and very unlikely to surprise us." I think boring is a fantastic shortcut for that, especially if you can trust your collaborators to understand it to mean that. If you can't trust your collaborators to understand that then sure, you need to find a different word. A couple of decades ago I helped create Django. One of the achievements I'm most proud of is that Django has graduated over time to being one of the most clear examples of a "boring" technology - it's widely used, stable, reliable, and thoroughly understood.