In the 1980s, high-tech companies stored information about their customers on their sophisticated and high-cost computer equipment. Back then such practices were exceptional except at relatively large companies. Thirty years later, it’s so commonplace that there are numerous services to store customer data for you “in the cloud.”

Anyone who has been around the web development block is going to tell you that they select technologies with some balance between coolness and pragmatism. The web development continuum has sound, safe, but stodgy on one side and shiny-obsession at the risk of unknown stability on the other. Few developers will find themselves at an extreme or precisely in the middle, and we’re no exception.