Learning to love the problem and not the solution

Has it happened to you that you get too attached to a solution to a problem instead of the problem itself? This is something that didn’t happen to me earlier in my career, but as I advanced and learned more about other technologies and approaches, which I became excited about, it started to happen more often. This is not the case with Tuist where the technology required to solve the problem is set, Swift and Xcode. But as I poured some spare thinking into the right tech for Glossia, I became more indecisive about the right tech to use.

To illustrate this, let me share my most recent experience. When I navigate the web, a pattern that I notice is that many websites that are designed with JavaScript frameworks are well designed. Today, in particular, I was amazed by how well-designed the websites made by the folks behind NuxtJS and VueJS are: Elk, NuxtUI, Volta, VitePress. Guess my thinking after seeing those websites? Is there a cause-effect relationship between the technology and the design? Or did developers with good taste happen to meet in those communities? Will technology like NuxtJS have a strong connection with a gorgeous design and a first-class experience in Glossia? Should I reconsider the decision to use Elixir now that it’s early in the lifetime of the project?

These are the questions that I mentally navigate when I’m exposed to new technologies. And it’s draining. I have to make an effort to look at things with enough perspective to realize that:

• Technology is an implementation detail. You can achieve a great design with any.
• Distractions for the technology are a way to procrastinate on the problem.
• The problem is the most important thing. The solution is just a means to an end.
• Other factors are equally important when choosing a technology, not just the design.

I want to change my mindset to stop doing this because it’s fatiguing. When I look around and see people that I admire, I see that they are focused on the problem and not the solution. They pick a technology that clicks with them and they stick with it. One of them is @dhh. He loves Ruby, and he is taking Ruby everywhere. @levelsio does the same with PHP. There are many examples in the Swift community too, like John Sundell.

Note that I don’t want to isolate myself from other technologies. I learn a lot from them which I can use to cross-pollinate my thinking. However, I need to do it enough so that I can learn from them and not get distracted by them. This is where the challenge lies.

Have you experienced something similar?