While I completely agree with your _sentiments_ I think there is a conflation between choosing _the right tool_ for the job vs using 'too many things'. I shun

While I completely agree with your _sentiments_ I think there is a conflation between choosing _the right tool_ for the job vs using 'too many things'. I shun the unnecessary - completely with you on that. But I'd prefer gaining relative mastery over _1 decent tool_ in each of the areas that you pointed out so that I have enough tools in my toolkit which prevent me from using the wrong tool for the wrong job. For example, I'd hate to use shell scripts to do something that ansible does really well. A modern solution, fortunately or unfortunately, is built up of multiple smaller tool sets as you pointed out - and, if used correctly, each enhance productivity tremendously. Writing a frontend app (something that I've only recently started doing since I'm on my own) is immensely more productive if working with something like react rather than with a relatively old framework based on the jvm. What I'm trying to say is - tech we use is ultimately a tool - we should optimise for productivity. In that case, Boring Technology helps being more productive since we know a lot more about it which makes it easier for us to bend it to our will as well as debug/diagnose the unknowns. But it also doesn't mean we continue to use `grep` when silversearcher/ripgrep is out there in the world :) That's the lens that I look with when I come across new tools/technologies (regardless of how long they've been around) - do they have the potential to be net-productivity enhancers over a long-ish period of time && by how much (0.5x? 5x?).