A few years ago, a colleague and good friend of mine described me as a “magic bullet” programmer, in that I tend to spend insane amounts of time trying to find the “right” language/IDE/platform for any given project, instead of just picking something and getting to work.
I just stumbled across this article, and I think it effectively describes this problem of over-engineering and the solution: The Duct Tape Programmer
The takeaway? Don’t succumb to the peer-pressure of new/shiny/complex.
The programmer in question, Jamie Zawinski, worked for Netscape in a past life. He is also one of many tech types profiled in Code Rush, an interesting documentary detailing the effort to release the source code for the Netscape web browser. This code would eventually become Firefox.