# Choose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Choose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Widely shared essay urging teams to favor proven technology, with the 'innovation tokens' idea praised for guiding choices. Critics say the slogan can shut down debate about flawed old tools.

## Why people recommend it

- Long-time favorite, useful over years (4 comments): "It is one of the most useful concepts I have had as a PM / eng leader in my career." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289692)) "I've found it extremely useful over the years, personally." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290469)) "still one of my favorite essays on software architecture" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46489683))
- Useful for communicating tradeoffs (2 comments): "This was a refreshing blog and presentation that provided a way to communicate to people boring is better, and to ship product." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49298078)) "It's clearly useful as a communication tool." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290722))
- Innovation tokens concept (2 comments): "This is one of my favorite blog posts, and it can basically be encapsulated in the idea of "innovation tokens."" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289849)) "innovation tokens is a neat idea" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296251))
- Guards against resume-driven development (2 comments): "Am I using this project as an excuse to learn some new technology, or am I trying to solve a problem?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48359724)) "I see innovation as a guardrail against CV driven development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290349))

## What people warn about

- Slogan shuts down discussion (3 comments): "it seems to be used in a way that shuts down discussion of how some "boring" technology is fundamentally defective" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292644)) "it created a thought terminating slogan that was used to justify choices that were bad for developer ergonomics" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49298313)) "Then "boring" is useless and you should just say" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290390))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [The Grug Brained Developer by Carson Gross](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grug-brained-developer.md): 13 recommend
- [The Bitter Lesson by Rich Sutton](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bitter-lesson.md): 10 recommend
- [Things You Should Never Do by Joel Spolsky](https://hackerapproved.com/p/things-you-should-never-do.md): 10 recommend
- [The Illustrated Transformer by Jay Alammar](https://hackerapproved.com/p/illustrated-transformer.md): 9 recommend
- [A Social Filesystem by Dan Abramov](https://hackerapproved.com/p/a-social-filesystem.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Choose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley", https://hackerapproved.com/p/choose-boring-technology/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).