Boring is a competitive advantage
The most reliable production systems in the world run on boring technology: Postgres, Redis, message queues, object storage, plain HTTP APIs, and well-structured application servers.
These technologies win not because they are exciting but because they are understood. Understood systems are debuggable, maintainable, and operable by normal engineers on normal days.
Why boring wins over time
Year one: The exciting technology feels productive. Year two: It requires specialized knowledge. The engineer who chose it has moved on. Documentation is sparse. Year three: It is a maintenance burden. Finding engineers who know it is expensive.
Meanwhile, boring technology has Stack Overflow answers for every error, monitoring tools that work out of the box, and documented upgrade paths.
The innovation budget
Every system has a limited budget for novelty. Spending it on infrastructure means less capacity for product innovation. Be boring in infrastructure, be creative in product.
Choose boring technology. Save your innovation budget for the problems that actually need novel solutions.