via source last accessed, 2024-07-14
In this essay, Dan McKinley claims that the key to successful innovation is to focus your innovation on what’s important and to choose tried-and-true “boring technology” for things where innovation is not critical.
Dan introduces two terms into software engineering circles:
The nice thing about boringness (so constrained) is that the capabilities of these things are well understood. But more importantly, their failure modes are well understood.
Re: Known unknowns and unknown unknowns >Both sets are typically non-empty, even for tech that’s existed for decades. But for shiny new technology the magnitude of unknown unknowns is significantly larger, and this is important.
I love this rebuttal to the “best tool for the job” cliche:
The problem with “best tool for the job” thinking is that it takes a myopic view of the words “best” and “job.” Your job is keeping the company in business, god damn it. And the “best” tool is the one that occupies the “least worst” position for as many of your problems as possible.
Actionable advice for adding technology:
If you think you can’t accomplish your goals with what you’ve got now, you are probably just not thinking creatively enough.
It’s helpful to write down exactly what it is about the current stack that makes solving the problem prohibitively expensive and difficult.