As software engineers, our default setting is often to over-engineer. When tasked with building a web utility—such as an image sorter or a layout planner—our minds immediately jump to designing a complete backend ecosystem. We start sketching out PostgreSQL schemas, configuring AWS S3 bucket lifecycles for user uploads, setting up Redis caches, and writing authentication middleware.
While this architecture is robust, it introduces massive overhead:
Financial Cost: Database queries and S3 egress fees scale with your user base.
Maintenance Burden: Keeping server packages updated, managing API endpoints, and handling database backups.
Legal Compliance: Storing user-uploaded files means dealing with GDPR, CCPA, and data privacy regulations.
