How to Choose Tech Decisions That Serve You (And the "This Must Be False" Rule)

Inspired by Nir Eyal's "beliefs are tools" framework Beliefs are tools, not truths. Tech stacks are too. Pick the ones that work for you. Most "tech debt" is actually "belief debt". We hold onto frameworks, patterns, and processes long after they stop serving the product. To build great software, we need to introduce a core rule: If a tech belief or "best practice" doesn’t solve a real problem for you right now, it must be treated as false. Here is how to audit your tech beliefs using 5 filters. 1. ARE THEY USEFUL? The real question isn’t "Is this the best tech?" It’s "Does this serve the user?" Tools are tools. Keep the ones that ship. Bad belief (Treat as False): "We need Kubernetes because it’s the industry standard." Useful belief (True for Now): "A $5 VPS serves 10k users. We’ll use K8s when we have a scaling problem, not a resume problem." If your architecture choice doesn’t make the core loop faster, cheaper, or simpler for users, it’s not serving you. Delete it. 2. ARE THEY TESTED? A useful stack holds up when the world pushes back. Pay attention to production, not the trending blog posts. Bad belief (Treat as False): "Microservices are inherently more scalable"—said before you even have 2 concurrent users. Tested belief (True for Now): "Our monolith handles 50 req/s perfectly. We’ll split services only when latency exceeds 300ms in prod." Load test it. Dogfood it. If it only works in a conference slide deck, it’s a story, not a tool. 3. ARE THEY OPEN? A tech choice you can’t change has stopped being a tool and has become a cage. Hold opinions firmly, but hold implementations loosely. Bad belief (Treat as False): "We’re a React shop forever." Open belief (True for Now): "React serves us today. If HTMX lets us ship this feature in 2 days instead of 2 weeks, we’ll use HTMX." In a famous study on hope, Curt Richter’s rats swam for 60 hours when they believed rescue was coming. Your team will grind for years on a legacy stack if they believe it can actually be r