What boring and utterly reliable technologies would you recommend?

Question

Seems like the tech landscape is littered with products and technologies that promise a lot but barely work, from messy and fragile languages and SDKs, to IDEs that are buggy as hell, etc. Some products start out well but then are enshittified.Every one in a while I come across a stable piece of tech is rock solid and delivers what it promises for years. It is "boring" in that it works well without a fuss. These are the technologies that will never let you down, in which you can invest building a business or for personal use.Some of the boring/reliable tech I've been impressed with:(1) PostgreSQL database (probably the most solid piece of technology I've had the pleasure to use)(2) Email via IMAP (well supported by most email providers, simple to setup, just works)(3) Macbooks (the hardware, not necessarily the MacOS running on them)What's your list?

bnchrch · Accepted Answer

Postgres is certainly the top of the list (and has been for a decade).
Outside of that I think there are a few ways you can split boring.
* Reliable + Around forever -> Erlang. (But its different enough from what most know that you may not find it boring to learn)
* Reliable + Around forever + boring to hire for -> Java, C#
* Reliable + Around forever + so simple its boring -> Go, HTTP, REST
* Reliable + Around forever + reduce the need to learn anything else -> Javascript, CSS, HTML, linux, vim, emacs,

romanhn · Answer

.NET Framework + C# fits the bill. Twenty years old, but still feels clean, modern, and reliable as it continues to evolve in a coherent manner.

usgroup · Answer

Prolog &mdash; a fine piece of kit from yesteryear. I advocate for it for logic and constraint programming use cases which abound.

prmph · Answer

Technologies that seem like they are solid but don't really deliver, very disappointingly:
- Linux (It's very much not as stable as one might think if you are daily driving it, pointer drivers for most distros are shit, packages are unstable, etc)
- Ocaml (tooling is atrocious, community is splintered and a mess)

progne · Answer

oranges, wood stoves, bungee cords, magnets, stretch wrap

thesuperbigfrog · Answer

Definition of "boring technology":https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technologySlides for the related presentation by the same author:https://boringtechnology.club/

hardkorebob · Answer

*BSD, Tk, Sh, IRC, FTP, plain text, musl.

auroralimon · Answer

Kerosene lanterns. astoundingly solid.

fsniper · Answer

sqlite3

BjoernKW · Answer

Java and Spring (Boot).

constantinum · Answer

Django Vim IRC Plain text

asdfzalsd · Answer

Django is very stable!

stop50 · Answer

IP: v4 and v6

fsniper · Answer

Linux kernel

fsniper · Answer

bash