this might sound dumb but after helping a few startups / side projects over the years something keeps bugging me
the things that actually cause pain are almost never the parts people argue about on X or reddit
ppl keep arguing about
- framework choice
- language wars
- microservices vs monoliths
but they dont even matter!!!!!
it’s always the boring stuff that actually bugged mee
like
- the cron job no one remembers setting up
- logs split between cloudwatch, sentry, and random stdout
- some admin endpoint that started as “temporary”
- env vars copied around
- infra that works but no one really understands anymore
i’ve seen pretty competent teams with react / postgres / redis / terraform
get burned by stuff like log retention settings or background workers silently dying
so i’m curious (genuinely):
what was the one technical thing that hurt the most in hindsight for you?
im sorry abt the rant