| I developed a checklist to spot technologies that are in an early stage of the hype cycle and avoid them. The following are signals that a technology is in and early part of the hype cycle: * It has the backing of a major corporation or a startup with a marketing budget. * There are a lot of rave articles/blog posts about building relatively simple or small self contained applications using this technology. * There is a small but vocal contingent of users who are passionately against the new technology. Their arguments often link to bugs on the bug tracker, cite edge cases that occur under heavy usage and indicate fundamental oversights in the design as well as assumptions (and often arrogance) on the part of the architects. * The benefits cited are either A) vague or B) explicitly aimed at beginners. * Arguments in favor often appeal to authority (e.g. "Google uses it" or "XYZ company use it in production"), popularity ("everybody's containerizing these days") or cite benefits which were already possible. * A high ratio of talk to action: the technology is talked about on Hacker News a lot but there appears to be very little real life stuff developed with it and a lot of the talk involves jamming it in where it's not really necessary. * Sometimes I experiment with a technology for an hour or two and I see if there's anything obviously wrong with it or if the criticisms are valid. |