Every year the tech world produces new frameworks, platforms, and tools promising to solve everything.

But the longer I work with web dev and infrastructure, the more I find myself gravitating toward simple, boring, reliable tools.

Examples

• Astro for building sites without a tangle of JavaScript
• Cloudflare for DNS and caching — fast and predictable
• Proxmox + containers for home lab services
• Bricks Builder when WordPress is right for the project
• Shell scripts that do one thing cleanly
• Backups that run whether you understand the stack or not

Why simplicity wins

1. Easier to debug
2. Easier to document
3. Fewer moving parts = fewer surprises
4. Volunteers, clients, and future-me can understand it
5. Minimalism creates mental space — both in code and in life

There’s still a place for experimentation, but it should serve a purpose. Most of my favourite setups are the ones that quietly get out of the way.