Ask HN: How do you quit agonizing over your choice of app stack?

Thanks. I really just needed someone to tell me this, sad as it is. I'm sure you may be able to relate to how sometimes you need someone to tell you what you already know before you really dig in. Anyway, thank you. I think I'll resist the lure of the shiny new thing and use what I know.

It is a business. I've got a business model that's ready to be implemented from the start so it does make sense to go with what I know.

I tend to conquer both at the same time. When I work on my own projects, I almost always choose a new platform to do it on, I at least switch out some core technology like going from a relational DB to NoSQL or switching out some major libraries for other libraries. This was tougher to do when I was more of a junior and had only one or two languages under my belt, but as I masters more technologies the ability to do it became easier and easier.

Many people view this as adding unnecessary risk to a project, I view it as the opposite, because if the project fails I don't look at it as a total loss, rather I can reflect on the project as a self directed tutorial, where I gained valuable knowledge, knowledge that a lot of people pay to learn. As well the cold hard reality is a lot of projects fail to become companies, so I use the learning as motivation against that reality. Further with each new switch the time of being able to make switches becomes more rapid, which has value in itself. What took me a month to learn from my first languadge to my second now takes me a few days when adapting to a new languadge. So depending on your perspective choosing a new stack can actually make it a less risky proposition for sinking your time into.

I am currently working on a new project in Clojure because I have wanted to learn a LISP dialect for a long time. To me it has already paid off, because LISP is a elegant as everyone says it is. Even if the project goes nowhere I am profoundly more valuable from the knowledge I have gained. I just wish I would have gotten around to picking up a LISP dialect sooner.

In the end it comes down to your ambitions, but projects should be about what drives you. If you truly have a desire to learn new technologies then by all means add that as a goal to your project. If your only overarching goal is to get to market ASAP then stick with what you know. But by all means, don't do it just because of other peoples opinions. Some technical people can be the most bloated wind bags out there. The kind of people that believe that only their way of doing things is right. People that act like that are universally wrong because development is an art as such it is subjective, the tools we use are like paint, some people express themselves in watercolor other in oil. Languages and technology stacks are very much like this and they reflect human thought, some languadge reflect how some people think better than others, but that does not mean that they reflect how you think best. Anyone that claims differently is just practicing dogma and should be ignored.

Yep. Partly true. I have no cred to begin with and I never really hoped to get it here, I've always assumed I'm the biggest idiot in a room full of smart people. But... Well, wait, I think you're totally right. Thank you, this totally solidifies my decision to just use what I know. I've my text editor open in the background and I'm starting.. Right... Now. Thanks.