Then it's useless. If I have to take the context into account then I should be prepared to have a conversation about the requirements and how the technology fits it, which "boring" does not facilitate (and discourages).

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simonw 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Weird take. It's clearly useful as a communication tool. You talk to your team, you say "Let's use boring technology. Read the essay, then we can discuss what boring technology means to us first."

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insanitybit 6 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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simonw 6 hours ago | parent [-]

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 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.