If you’re a small- or medium-sized business considering your technology strategy, here’s what you should and should not care about in Feburary, 2024:

Care: AI

Once again, I’ve got to suggest to everyone that you at least think about how AI is going to fit into your technology goals. For most businesses it’s not anything you need to execute on yet, but you should be thinking about it.

Don’t Care, yet: XR

The new Apple Vision Pro is in the hands of real people, and the reviews have called it everything from amazing to boring. I’ve played with a few more AR platforms lately, and I think most of it is not ready for prime-time. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. There’s a killer app hidden in there somewhere. I’m just not so sure Apple has figured it out yet.

Care: TypeScript

We work with a lot of React, Node, and other JS-based frameworks. I can’t think of a single project we’ve done in the last year that wasn’t built in TypeScript. We like it. Our clients like it. It’s got huge advantages, even though it’s particularly clumsy.

Don’t Care: Crypto

The last 12 months have been great for Bitcoin, but the last 4 years have shown us that it’s not stable enough to be treated as a currency. It may be an investment vehicle for people with the risk tolerance of a teenage snowboarder. Maybe.

Care: Platform Engineering

The benefits of DevOps 10 years ago were huge. And then it started to get complex, difficult, and expensive. It’s starting to mature, and with that maturity comes good patterns and good tooling. Yes, you can very easily waste time and money, but if you do it smartly, it will be worth it.