18 Months of Code, Gone. Here's What We Learned.
Summary
A founder recounts an 18-month product build that was scrapped and rebuilt, detailing the shift from a no-tests approach to strict testing and a complete rewrite. The post explains why Next.js Server Actions were dropped, why the team moved from a Next.js stack to React with tRPC and a Hono backend, and why Kubernetes-based orchestration with Argo was chosen to manage complex, stateful workflows. It offers practical lessons on engineering discipline, architecture decisions, and the realities of building reliable automation and deployment pipelines in startups.