This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Samuel Mutemi
The Grand Illusion of “Future-Proof” Code
Ah, the siren song of scalability. It whispers sweet nothings into our ears: “Build it right the first time,” “You’ll thank yourself later,” “What if you get 10 million users tomorrow?” And before you know it, you’ve spent three months architecting a dazzling microservices masterpiece, only to realize your “scalable” app has exactly one user: you, refreshing the page in incognito mode.
This was me. I was that developer. Convinced that my side project needed a Kubernetes cluster, a distributed notification system, and a payment service that could handle Stripe-level traffic, despite the fact that my MVP was still just a glorified to-do list.
The Hard Truth: Scale Doesn’t Matter If Nobody Cares
Here’s the uncomfortable reality: You cannot optimize for problems you don’t have yet.
- Are you drowning in user traffic? → No? Then why are you building a CDN?
- Do you have 10,000 concurrent payment requests? → No? Then why are you overengineering Stripe?
- Are your notifications crashing under load? → No? Then why did you build a pub-sub system when Novu’s free tier exists?
I had to face the music: I wasn’t building for scale, I was procrasti-scaling. Avoiding the real work (making something people actually wanted) by obsessing over infrastructure that might matter someday.
The Pivot: From Over-Engineered to “Good Enough”
So I did the unthinkable: I deleted months of work and replaced it with:
- Supabase (Auth + DB) → Free tier. Works. Done.
- Novu (Notifications) → Free tier. Works. Done.
- Stripe (Payments) → Basic integration. Works. Done.
Suddenly, I was making real progress – not on infrastructure, but on the actual product. And guess what? If (big if) my app ever outgrows these tools, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
The Lesson: Build Stupid First
Your first version should be embarrassingly simple. Not because you’re lazy, but because:
- You don’t yet know what needs scaling. (Most things won’t.)
- Premature optimization is the root of all evil. (Or at least wasted time.)
- Your biggest risk isn’t scale, it’s building something nobody wants.
So next time you catch yourself designing a Kafka pipeline for your cat blog, ask:
“Is this solving a real problem, or just my fear of hypothetical ones?”
Because in the end, a working app with limits beats an unfinished “scalable” one every time.
Now go build something stupid. You can always make it smart later. 
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Samuel Mutemi