I've watched a lot of technology hype cycles.
Some technologies become foundational. Most don't. The ones that fail tend to share a pattern: they solve problems that don't exist yet, or create more complexity than they eliminate. The people who bet early on them rarely talk about it later.
I don't adopt technology because it's new. I adopt it because it creates leverage that lasts. Being early is optional. Being intentional isn't.
The cost of being early
Early adoption feels smart. You're ahead of the curve. You see what others don't. You're building the future.
But early adoption has real costs:
- Immature tooling. Documentation is sparse. Edge cases aren't handled. You're debugging the framework instead of building your product.
- Breaking changes. APIs shift. Best practices reverse. Code you wrote six months ago is now "legacy."
- Ecosystem gaps. No libraries for common problems. You build everything yourself.
- Hiring friction. Nobody knows the stack. Training takes longer. Talent is expensive.
- Abandonment risk. The project loses momentum. The company pivots. You're stuck maintaining a dead-end.
Early adopters absorb these costs so later adopters don't have to. That's valuable for the ecosystem. But it's not always valuable for your business.
What I actually look for
When I evaluate technology, I'm not asking "is this new?" I'm asking:
Does it have real traction?
Not hype. Not VC funding announcements. Actual usage by teams solving real problems. Production deployments. Battle scars.
Is it battle-tested?
Has it survived contact with scale? With edge cases? With the kind of chaos that production systems generate? Stability matters more than features.
Does it reduce complexity?
New technology should make things simpler, not more complicated. If adopting it means adding three new dependencies and a build pipeline, the math has to work out.
Does it compound over time?
Some tools give you a one-time boost. Others create leverage that grows. I prefer the second kind.
How this has played out
Rails
I wasn't an early Rails adopter. I waited until it was proven.
By the time I committed, Rails had strong conventions, a mature ecosystem, and a track record of successful production systems. Developers could move between projects easily. Problems were already solved.
That patience paid off. I've been building on Rails for years. The early instability would have cost me time I couldn't afford.
JavaScript frameworks
I watched the JavaScript framework wars from a distance. Angular. Ember. Backbone. React. Vue. Svelte. Each one "the future" for a while.
I didn't bet heavily on any of them. Instead, I use Stimulus and Hotwire — tools that enhance server-rendered HTML without owning the entire frontend. Less churn. Less complexity. Good enough for almost everything I build.
The teams that rewrote their apps three times chasing the latest framework? They shipped less than I did.
AI
I worked with machine learning before it was accessible. Early models were brittle. Integration was painful. The gap between demo and production was enormous.
I waited. Around 2024–2025, tools like Claude crossed a threshold. Deep technical understanding could finally be multiplied dramatically. The leverage became real.
This is still an advantage phase. Accessible enough to use, difficult enough to use well. But the timing is right now in a way it wasn't three years ago.
The waiting game
Waiting isn't passive. I'm constantly reading, researching, experimenting. I want to understand where things are going before I commit to building on them.
But understanding isn't the same as adopting. I can follow a technology for years before deciding it's ready. Or deciding it never will be.
The goal isn't to be first. The goal is to be right.
When to move
Timing isn't about a calendar. It's about signals.
Move when:
- The technology has proven itself in environments similar to yours
- The ecosystem is mature enough to support your use case
- The team can adopt it without heroics
- The benefits clearly outweigh the switching costs
Wait when:
- You'd be the guinea pig
- The documentation is mostly "coming soon"
- The core APIs are still changing
- Success depends on things going right
The meta-principle
Technology adoption is a bet. Every bet has a cost — time, money, attention, opportunity.
Being early increases your potential upside but also increases variance and downside risk. Being late reduces risk but may mean missing windows of advantage.
The sweet spot is somewhere in between: early enough to capture leverage, late enough to avoid the bleeding edge.
I don't chase trends. I watch them, test them, and move when the timing is right.
Awareness without hype. Adoption with intent. Timing over novelty.