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Moeki Kawakami
Moeki Kawakami

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Technological selection is rhythm game!

I've been reading and learning a lot lately about technology selection from different teams.

There are many differences in technology selection between teams, one of which is how advanced they are.

Progressive vs Conservative
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Whenever we talk about technology selection, it's always a hot topic.
Often the argument is, "It's too early to use this," or "Isn't this already out of date?" or "Isn't it too old?

In reading various articles about technology selection, I have found myself thinking.

  • What are the criteria that make you feel you are too advanced or too conservative in selecting a certain technology?

I'd like to dig deeper into this question.

What kind of technology selection do I consider too progressive?

For example, when I feel that a certain technology adoption is too advanced, it is when

  • Rudimentary PR or issues are accumulating.
  • I don't see any blogs out there that have tried it.
  • I read the documentation and there are too many new concepts to understand.

All these senses are relative and have to be compared with other libraries and frameworks, but I understood that rather that is the point.

What kind of technology selection do you feel is too conservative?

On the other hand, I feel too conservative in the following cases

  • PRs and issues are left unaddressed
  • A completely upwardly compatible library is being promoted.
  • The date of publication of the blog where you tried it is already long ago.

Choosing which UI to adopt may be a similar story

What is an easy-to-understand UI? I often ask myself, "What's the most common UI? This is because users do not use only our products. They use various applications in their daily lives and learn how to use computers on a daily basis.

In that context, old UI.

  • Black phone crux.
  • Floppy disk save symbols (do they still exist?)
  • scuumorphism (is this still around?)

and unseen UI will confuse users.
As well as avoiding these, we felt that we needed to follow other product and industry trends in technology selection.

Rhythm of Technology

Get into the rhythm of technology. Don't be too late or too early.

That's because technology is social.

How do you get into the rhythm of technology?

  • Dive into the actual library and language community
    • Look in the repositories.
    • Ask lots of questions.
    • Contribute to things you like
  • Communicate with other teams
    • Conferences
    • Technical blog
    • Hear about failures

I guess this is about right. Well, it's obvious, but you may need to pay attention to the following points.

Things that have nothing to do with the rhythm of technology.

My own impression

The feeling of touching the technology by yourself may possibly not be reliable.
Even if a framework is pleasant to touch for you, it may not be so for the world, and it may pass away as it is.

Innovativeness of the technology

If we can use that technology to solve all sorts of problems! but if the community is not fully developed, security risks and bugs may be addressed too late.

However, there are cases where too advanced or too conservative a choice is a good one.

I remember back in the day when Apple adopted flat design with iOS7 and got a lot of flak for it.
However, as is the case with many of the policies that Apple has advocated, flat design has become an airy UI that has somehow made its way into the world.
I think this is because Apple is a platformer. Platforms should work on challenging technologies that can break through the status quo and are easy to work on.

Conversely, there are times when too conservative a choice is a good one. On the other hand, there are times when being too conservative is a good choice, such as when a very high level of safety is required. For example, the cockpit of an airplane should be improved slowly and for a long time, because a new UI might cause confusion.

I think this is also true for technology selection. There are cases where exceptional choices should be made if safety is required or if it is a platformer of some kind.

Conclusion

  • Technology selection should be done according to the rhythm of the world.
  • Actually, the same can be said for UI.
  • There are cases where exceptional choices should be made.

Thank you.

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