> (...) scalability is often overrated. (...) focusing too much on scalability can actually hinder growth and creativity.
I find this blend of comment unproductive and intellectually dishonest. "Often" and "too much" are weasel words that remove any objective meaning from the verbs they qualify, to the point where stating the exact opposite is also valid.
The truth of the matter is that scalability is only not important when you don't need it, but it's already disastrously too late if you failed to scale when you need to.
The problem is if the commenter says “doing X works” instead of doing “doing X often works” there will be a HN avalanche of “yabut so-and-so didn’t do X” and allegations of survivorship bias.
> (...) there will be a HN avalanche of “yabut so-and-so didn’t do X” and allegations of survivorship bias.
Isn't it also survivorship bias to claim that scalability is overrated because a non-scalable system didn't broke in a particular case of a local deployment with residual demand?
Meanwhile hikes in demand hitting an unscalable system can and do break businesses, and when it happens is already too late to rearchitect things.
I find this blend of comment unproductive and intellectually dishonest. "Often" and "too much" are weasel words that remove any objective meaning from the verbs they qualify, to the point where stating the exact opposite is also valid.
The truth of the matter is that scalability is only not important when you don't need it, but it's already disastrously too late if you failed to scale when you need to.