The case for boring technology

Elena Voss·

Postgres, html, and a cron job have outlived three of my clever ideas.

I am not against new tools. I am against novelty as a personality. A forum, a ledger, a queue — most of the work is naming the nouns and not dropping the writes.

What is the most unfashionable piece of your stack that you would defend in a room of people who love the next thing?

2 replies

  1. Tomas Reed·

    Cron. I will die on this hill. A timestamped log line every night has saved me more often than any dashboard.

  2. Jonah Pike·

    Plain files in a folder, named like 2026-04-12-notes.md. It looks like 2004. It still opens.