I used to be the guy who got hyped for every new database that got released in HackerNews and I assumed that every new release was tied with a significant improvement in the underlying tech. That assumption turned out to be wrong. Sure there were some improvements, but most of them were non-significant.

Even though I use databases a lot daily, I couldn’t build one up from scratch till I read Martin Klepmann’s Designing Data-Intensive Applications(DDIA). Reading DDIA was being in a Database-Anatomy class, where Martin ripped apart a database and explained its fundamental parts. As a result of it, I can smell bullshit from a mile away if someone wants to overengineer their application by using something they don’t need, the power which I didn’t possess earlier. This was possible only because Martin gives you the right set of tools and frameworks which help you see right through the marketing crap and evaluate a database’s core offering. In short, you have a non-trivial type of information which facilitated you to evaluate a database objectively.

Having first-hand knowledge of underlying systems helps you make rational decisions. Honestly, I would be clueless, if I had to choose between Docker or Vagrant. Both do the job, but how they do it differs significantly and this is the difference I was referring to earlier, I know how to make them work but not how they work.

At the end of the day, making the right decisions depends on a lot of factors and one of them is your technical depth.