Hacker News Reader

Comment by zasz | Hacker News Reader

Suppose the OP leaves. It's going to be hard for the his former coworkers to maintain the Ruby app.

Ultimately everybody leaves. Does this mean you should never change your language or technology stack?

Do what gets the job done, within reasonable limits. If the expected maintenance is minimal and you can improve your personal capability and/or produce the deliverable faster using a different technology, by all means go for it. I've had to learn languages far more unpleasant than Ruby (VBA, I'm looking right at you!!) in order to maintain programs that no one expected would ever change. That's life!

$30,000 hard, or minor annoyance hard?

Depends on how competent his coworkers are.

Maybe "one-off" means something different where you're from, but I read it as meaning this wasn't an issue.

A classic mistake people make is assuming that something isn't an issue, when the other party DOES think it is an issue.

If you think the maintainability of a one-off script that's probably already been deleted because its job is done is that crucial, you're simply nuts. If it needs to be maintained, then by definition it is not a one-off.

If the OP did a proper job documenting his work and his former coworkers are competent, it would only be a tiny bit selfish.

And it is not unlikely that there is somebody else looking for an opportunity to put Ruby experience on her resume, and will gladly take on the maintenance. In that case you have created value for your co-workers, too.

If management would like easy-to-maintain software, they are free to start prioritizing it.

Hard for them to maintain, or they wouldn't be as inclined to, if it were written in their language du jour?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com