Focus on the product, not the tech stack

Recently I got this DM,

“Which tech stack should I learn?”

“Should I use Next.js or Svelte?”

“Is Python better for the backend than node?”

I am sure we have asked or been asked questions like this several times in our tech journeys. As someone who is just starting out, I think it seems like a very important thing to ask. You don’t wanna waste your time learning a technology that might become worthless soon? Or isn’t fast enough? or isn’t the “industry standard”… right?

Or should it matter?

Languages are just tools

Back in 2003 when Facebook was originally founded, its backend was written in PHP. Was it the lack of options? You can say so. Back then they certainly didn’t have a plethora of frameworks or hell even languages to choose from. But what about now? Realistically PHP should be dead by now…

Right?

But if you look at the statistics by Kinsta, around 79.2% of the internet still relies on PHP to some degree. Okay, but that number has to be declining for sure!

But wait...

Nope, it has been on a steady increase since 2011, peaking at 80.6% in 2015, and maintaining a steady line.

But how?

It’s because language is just a tool. It does not matter how many new bleeding edge languages enter the market increasing the performance metrics by some fractions of seconds, as long as a tool language sufficiently fulfills its job, it will stay relevant. PHP has done a great job at that. It’s constantly evolving as well, something which is direly required to stay alive in the software world.

So next time if someone asks you “Which language should I choose?”, ask them two things:

1. Which language are you more comfortable with?
2. Do the other languages provide a set of features more beneficial for your use case? Even if so are they worth the effort to learn? (arguments like uh it's 0.001sec faster should not be relevant)

It’s OK to not upgrade

I was once asked, “Why is your website still at Next version 13 when 15 has arrived?”

To which I ask, why does it matter? Sure software is meant to be ever-evolving, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it's a good idea to always hop on the upgrade bandwagon without looking at the consequences.

This in this case will be a complete re-write since Next 15 introduces a ton of breaking changes.

And it's OK not to upgrade every time.

Judge a product by its usefulness, not complexity

A lot of people especially those building projects just for improving their resume will try to make them extremely complex. It will be a wobbly mess of high-end sounding technologies like SSR, TRPC, GraphQL, Kubernetes, Redis, etc.

Sure I do understand the thinking behind this, it does show your ability to work with complex technologies.

But in the age of AI and the really fast-moving pace of technology, it's pretty trivial for someone to learn technologies on the go and incorporate them into their project. Real engineering will always be that “solves a problem, not create one”. Solving problems always requires asking questions first:

1. Does your project really need TRPC or GraphQL? Why not just use REST like everyone does bruh?
2. Do I really need Kubernetes for those 5 concurrent connections?
3. Does my really interactive website need SSR where then each button click will be a server action and take ages to process any action?

And please, stop building clones. It does not matter:

• how many services you use in it
• how much knowledge you gained from creating it
• how complex the project was to make

The YouTube clone you made by following a random Youtuber’s 8-hour-long guide is not going to help you in any way.

Quoting Theo (idk where he said tho):

To build a great product, you need to first be a customer

If you want project ideas, look around you. Try to solve problems you face every day. If you just try looking, you WILL find many.

Final words

This blog is a summary of my (I admit very short-lived) experience of working in tech till now. I always tried not to treat tech as something I specialize in, but as a tool that helps me solve problems.

I started off my journey in web with a simple problem, I just wanted a website of my own because it would be cool :D

Then a simple problem gave birth to more problems with a chain reaction ongoing, to me finding myself working with PHP, something I would have never imagined doing in a million years before.

So…. that’s it. Keep building and showcasing your work, and most importantly, have fun at it!