Embracing the 3-Month Rule: A Pragmatic Approach to Non-Scalable Solutions
In the realm of startups, there’s a well-known adage from Paul Graham that advocates for doing things that don’t initially scale. However, the question remains: how can developers effectively apply this wisdom in their coding practices? After eight months of building my AI podcast platform, I’ve devised a straightforward framework that I’ve dubbed the 3-Month Rule. Under this guideline, each unscalable hack is allotted three months of testing to either validate its worth and transition into a scalable solution or be discarded.
The prevailing mentality in engineering often emphasizes the development of scalable solutions right from the jump. We are trained to create intricate architectures—think microservices and distributed systems—designed to support millions of users. However, this mindset often leads to costly procrastination in a startup environment. By optimizing for nonexistent users and addressing potential problems that may not arise, we waste valuable time and resources. My 3-Month Rule compels me to focus on crafting straightforward solutions that deliver results and reveal genuine user needs.
Current Practical Strategies That Prove Effective
1. Consolidated Infrastructure on a Single VM
I operate my entire platform—a database, web server, background jobs, and Redis—all on one $40 monthly virtual machine, with no redundancy and manual backups to my local drive.
This approach may seem reckless, yet it has provided invaluable insights into my resource requirements over the past two months. I’ve discovered that my platform, surprisingly, tops out at 4GB of RAM. The complex Kubernetes setup I nearly implemented? It would have required management of empty containers. When the system has crashed—twice thus far—I received real-time data on the actual points of failure, and it turns out the issues were never what I anticipated.
2. Directly Hardcoded Configurations
My code employs hardcoded constants scattered across files, such as:
plaintext
PRICE_TIER_1 = 9.99
PRICE_TIER_2 = 19.99
MAX_USERS = 100
AI_MODEL = "gpt-4"
Lacking configuration files or environmental variables means that any adjustment necessitates a redeployment. The benefit of this approach? I can easily search my entire codebase in seconds to locate any config value. Changes are tracked through Git history, ensuring every modification undergoes a review—albeit by myself.
Spending a
One Comment
This is a compelling perspective on embracing iterative validation over premature scalability. The 3-Month Rule resonates strongly—it’s a practical method to prevent paralysis by analysis in early-stage development. Your emphasis on “doing things that don’t scale” aligns with the idea that rapid experimentation often uncovers genuine user needs more effectively than overly complex architectures from the outset.
I particularly appreciate your transparent approach with consolidated infrastructure and hardcoded configs—these practices may seem risky at first glance, but they provide invaluable real-world feedback that shapes future scaling decisions. As startups grow, these insights can inform more robust infrastructure choices, making the eventual transition to scalable solutions both deliberate and data-driven.
Have you considered integrating a lightweight configuration management layer once your platform stabilizes, to maintain development speed while easing transitions? Overall, your framework underlines a disciplined balance between agility and strategic planning—an approach every early-stage developer can learn from.