The Hype Trap: Why Cutting Edge Isn’t Always the Best Choice

Show Notes

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Constant buzz around new frameworks and tools
- The marketing and excited chatter in the zeitgeist are designed to draw you in and give a new tool users - but is adopting the newest tool in your best interest?
Feeling pressured to "keep up"
- “Everyone in my Discord is using Cursor, should I drop everything and start learning & using that?”
Influence of the hype cycle on decision-making
- Are your decisions designed around keeping up with new tools? Or designed to push your skills, income, and business further?
Impact on both personal and professional projects
- Are you using the right tool for the job?

Minimal documentation and tutorials
- Niche issues may stump you for hours
- AI will have less detailed answers (less content to learn on)
- If you’re just learning how to code, less guides means less ways topics are explained - if you don’t understand the only guide available, there is no alternative
Small or inactive communities
- Yelling into the ether of a Discord that nobody checks “Hey I have X issue, has anyone found a solution for this?”
High likelihood of bugs and instability
- As more users use a product, it matures with patches, hotfixes, and feature updates
- A new offering is naturally less mature - the more niche your project, the higher likelihood that your use case has not been tested
Potential need to rewrite parts of the project
- You may find yourself absolutely stumped on a problem, so you may need to leverage another technology and stitch them together to get the job done
  - This adds technical debt and complexity to your project

Larger communities offer better support
- More guides, more perspectives, and more projects (niches tested)
- If there are influencers having issues, their problems may be solved quickly (due to community impact) - more influencers involved, the quicker the tool will mature
Established tools often have extensive documentation
- Detailed documentation with real-world examples
  - Full pages dedicated to use-cases that had people stumped in the community
  - Transition guides (You know React, now try this…)
Easier to troubleshoot issues quickly
- More forum posts with people that had the same issue
- AI chatbots have more solutions built-in with increased training

Clients prioritize reliability over trendiness
- Is your client that’s trying to run their non-technical business (ie selling books) interested in using the latest tech? Or the best tech for selling books?
Maintainability is key for long-term success
- If you’re running an agency, or are a freelancer, time is money
- Your client sites need to be stable enough to need little intervention (unless they’re constantly paying you to be involved - which many small to medium businesses cannot afford)
Total cost of ownership matters more than novelty
- Is the newest tech a novelty that you can show off to your tech bros? Or is is a business decision?
  - You need to ask yourself if your project needs the novelty, or the business value (ie some developers will want to code everything from the ground up, which takes more time and can lead to getting stuck on bugs)
Business risk increases with unproven technology
- Imagine doing in-person business deals, sending people to your website or web app - only to have it be down all the time?
- This also applies to projects run on a budget that is too small - running out of hosting resources (ie storage space) and barely keeping things alive is a bad look for clients

Use the right tool for the job:
- Use simpler solutions for smaller projects
  - Simple does not mean the most cutting-edge, even if they promise how simple they are in their marketing
- Avoid overengineering basic websites or apps
  - You want to write about plants in your backyard - do you need more than WordPress?
- Choose tools that match complexity and goals
  - You don’t need a CRM for somebody’s hobby blog
- Consider time and budget constraints
  - The project dictates the budget usually, even if you have a million dollars, you don’t need to spend all of it for a small project

Pressure to constantly learn new tech stacks
- Stop and go mentality - you’ll never master any tools you use because you keep switching
Mental fatigue and loss of motivation - comparing yourself to others on social media
- Personally, I find seeing people on social media claiming to be gurus on software that was released in the past month or so exhausting - makes me feel like I need to learn and do more
Difficulty finding time to master tools
- It takes time to learn new tools and it also takes time to make new projects - which one is more important to you?
Accepting that it's okay to not use the newest tech - Feeling inadequate for not using the latest tech
- If your project doesn’t call for the newest tech, then you don’t need to use it.
- Think to yourself - if you had this project completed fully in an older technology like jQuery - would you still value it? Does the project have value, or the tech that powers it?
Fear of falling behind in your career
- If you constantly learn new tech and put nothing into practice, what level of experience can you honestly present on your resume?