Embracing the 3-Month Rule: A Pragmatic Approach to Unscalable Solutions in Tech
In the world of startup development, Paul Graham’s famous adage, “Do things that don’t scale,” often echoes in the minds of entrepreneurs and engineers. But how do we apply this wisdom effectively, particularly in the realm of coding? After eight months of developing my AI podcast platform, I’ve stumbled upon a practical framework that I call the “3-Month Rule.” This guideline allows unscalable hacks to exist for just three months, after which they either demonstrate their value and receive a more robust implementation or are discarded.
The Challenge of Scalable Solutions
As engineers, we’re often trained to focus on scalability from the outset. We dive into design patterns, microservices, and distributed systems, all intended to accommodate a massive user base. However, in a startup environment, chasing scalability can lead to costly procrastination. Too often, we find ourselves optimizing for a user demographic that hasn’t yet materialized, tackling problems that may never exist. The 3-Month Rule nudges me to prioritize straightforward, albeit “inelegant,” code that actually gets deployed, helping me uncover the genuine needs of my users.
Current Infrastructure Hacks: Practical and Purposeful
1. Consolidated on a Single VM
For my platform, everything—database, web server, background jobs, Redis—runs on a single $40/month virtual machine. There’s no redundancy and manual backups to my local system are the norm. Surprisingly, this decision has been enlightening. In just two months, I gained invaluable insights into my resource requirements. Instead of building out an intricate Kubernetes architecture that would have managed empty containers, I now know my platform peaks at just 4GB RAM. Each system crash provides real data about failures, often revealing insights that I didn’t initially anticipate.
2. Hardcoded Configuration Spread Across Code
With configuration values like pricing tiers and user limits hardcoded in various files, I’ve adopted a no-frills approach. While this means redeploying for changes, it also offers a unique advantage: I can swiftly search my codebase to track configurations, and each price adjustment is logged in my version history. Instead of investing a week into developing a configuration service, my changes have totaled about 15 minutes in deployment time over three months.
3. SQLite for Production Use
Yes, I’m currently utilizing SQLite for a multi-user web application with a database
