Lindy Effect: Web Standards as an Investment
Every dependency you add is a bet that someone else won’t abandon their project. If the code you write today relies on an abstraction born yesterday, you are buying technical debt with a short expiration date. Choosing tools based on “hype” isn’t a strategy, it’s a gamble. Experience looks for probability of survival.
What does the Lindy Effect tell us about technical debt?#
In software, time acts as the ultimate quality filter. Unlike living beings, ideas and technologies gain “life expectancy” for every year they survive in production.
It doesn't eliminate maintenance, but it eliminates external volatility.
Recurring costs from forced migrations and breaking changes.
Writing code coupled to the native browser API means the code from 10 years ago still works today without needing to run npm audit fix or fighting broken dependencies.
Why is choosing a framework a financial gamble?#
Choosing a framework is not a technical decision. It’s signing a future contract that includes three mandatory costs: forced migrations, technological lock-in, and constant team retraining. Frameworks are not the problem; the problem is using them where the standard is already enough.
If you can’t justify why that extra layer of abstraction will outlast the product’s own lifecycle (impacting long-term ROI), you are gambling with your client’s money.
Investing in web standards is buying compound interest. Investing in ephemeral frameworks is paying a technical annuity just to keep the ship afloat.
The best code is the one that keeps working when no one is maintaining it. If you need constant updates just to keep your stack alive, you didn’t build an investment: you bought a subscription. What depends less, lasts longer.