By no means have I seen everything there is to see in the world of development, but I have been around long enough to see the change from needing a single database which housed all your data, to this world where there’s SO MUCH data that you couldn’t possibly store it all in a single database, on a single server, or in many cases, not a dozen servers.

As the volume of data has increased, we’ve seen new patterns emerge such as microservices, database sharding and more. Many times those tasked with adapting to these changes try to take our existing toolsets such as languages, or database technologies and we try to force them to handle those changes along the way. Ever heard that saying, “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Check it out – there’s an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to it here.

I suggest that it is incumbent on you, as a developer, as a manager, or a director, or a leader…someone in the capacity making technological decisions to make yourself aware of tools that already exist to solve the technical challenges you or your organization encounter.

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