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Comment on Ask HN: What kind of information do you look for before learning/using new tech?

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Maybe I’m strange by HM standards, but unless it’s sometjing I’m just learning for fun, it must be used by 2-3 major companies or projects before I’ll consider it worth seriously picking up. It must solve a problem I have that I can’t solve with technology I already know. It must be relatively approachable and have at least minimal documentation.

It highly depends and what you're doing, most people don't face the same issues as "major companies" like Netflix, Google, Uber etc ... Yet a lot of people chose their stack based on these companies and you end up with over engineered solutions which are slower / harder to maintain than smaller / less hyped technologies.

Whether something is used by others may be more a gauge for whether there is motivation to support it / whether it is here to stay, than whether it's the best solution to my problems.

When I'm trying to choose between competing technologies, I often choose based on popularity rather than isolated merits, as want to build upon something which other people will be contributing to, rather than something marked for death.

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