Agreed. Their example is that selecting Elixir was a great choice for them. Cool. That was using an Innovation Token.
I'm guessing that in addition to Elixir, they also used plenty of boring technology. Like using `cron` or `at` rather than writing your own scheduling subsystem. Or building on top of a standard OSS database rather than rolling their own.
The point isn't to _never_ to use new technology, but rather to use enough boring tech that you still have mental bandwidth to pour into the new tech, innovation, or product that will be your competitive edge.
A technological aside that's neither here nor there with regards to the broader 'boring' debate: one of the advantages of Erlang/Elixir is that it's more of a self-contained ecosystem than, say, Rails, where you can run a bunch of different "applications" inside the same process, and it's easy for them to talk to one another. There are a number of 'cron' type things that you can easily run within your BEAM system. For some kinds of applications and deployments, this is pretty convenient. It's easier to create jobs programmatically, to introspect them, and to keep track of them all within the same system, without an external dependency.
I'm guessing that in addition to Elixir, they also used plenty of boring technology. Like using `cron` or `at` rather than writing your own scheduling subsystem. Or building on top of a standard OSS database rather than rolling their own.
The point isn't to _never_ to use new technology, but rather to use enough boring tech that you still have mental bandwidth to pour into the new tech, innovation, or product that will be your competitive edge.