Stop Designing Your Web Application for Millions of Users When You Don’t Even Have 100 · The Angry Dev

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2024-09-19 11:00:05

Darren Horrocks explains various Programming and DevOps practices, with some guides, explanations and ramblings from a sometimes angry man

It’s easy to get carried away when you’re building a new web app. You’ve got big ideas, you picture millions of users flocking to your platform, and you start imagining the kind of infrastructure needed to handle all that traffic. So, you build for scale from day one—optimising databases, setting up powerful servers, and ensuring everything is robust enough for massive growth.

But hold on a second. If you don’t even have 100 users yet, designing your app for millions is a massive overreach. In fact, it’s probably holding you back more than helping. Here’s why you should focus on the here and now, and stop worrying about a future that may be a long way off.

When you’re just starting out, you’re making a lot of guesses. You think you know what your users will want and how they’ll use your app, but the reality might be completely different. If you design your app to handle millions of users before you’ve even got your first 100, you’re making decisions based on assumptions rather than real data.