Ask HN: Building for Joy vs. Building for Scale

Posted by chbkall on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @11:34PM
from the ask-hn dept.

Did you ever have to choose between building for joy and building for scale? What did you choose? Did it change over time?

( 2 comments | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Building for Joy vs. Building for Scale by herbst on Thursday July 03, 2025 @04:55AM (#44453023)

Scale? As in using the whole AWS stack for maybe 100 daily clicks? Or scale as in avoiding 1:N and building a proper data model that doesn't fail on scale?

I never build for "scale" I just have joy building clean code. I never experienced scale issues that couldn't be solved by upgrading a 5$ VPS to the next level.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Building for Joy vs. Building for Scale by chbkall on Thursday July 03, 2025 @12:29PM (#44456721)

I meant business scale ... sometimes we have to make choices in terms of building for a (potentially) large audience or building something you feel joyful about and not caring for scaling.

[ Parent | on HN ]