Ask HN: Building for Joy vs. Building for Scale

1 chbkall 2 7/3/2025, 3:34:26 AM
Did you ever have to choose between building for joy and building for scale? What did you choose? Did it change over time?

Comments (2)

herbst · 7h ago
Scale? As in using the whole AWS stack for maybe 100 daily clicks? Or scale as in avoiding 1:N and building a proper data model that doesn't fail on scale?

I never build for "scale" I just have joy building clean code. I never experienced scale issues that couldn't be solved by upgrading a 5$ VPS to the next level.

chbkall · 7m ago
I meant business scale ... sometimes we have to make choices in terms of building for a (potentially) large audience or building something you feel joyful about and not caring for scaling.