Ask YC: To learn or to outsource?

I have been trying to get our startup off the ground for sometime now. The problem is one of our developer Founders who did some Rails development for us left and now we are left with myself and another developer who is not well versed with Rails.

I used to be a very good Programmer in School and I know that I can do a good job programming, but I am the business guy now, not having much time to learn Rails development. The lack of time almost always discourages me to learn Rails, since there are so many other things on my plate. But at the same time, it is gating progress.

The other developer believes that we should outsource our Rails development. Have we accumulated a lot of technical debt as a result of the old Rails developer leaving us? How do we fix this situation? Also, the other developer Founder is more inclined to manage rather than coding. I believe the startup's founder should build the core offering themselves.

So following are my questions, so that we can get unstuck:

1. Do I learn Rails and come up to speed so that I can start contributing in a big way. What is the best approach for this goal? What kind of a timeframe am I looking at? 2. Should we hire a Rails developer to take things forward for us? Is outsourcing an option considering we want to get our core offering developed? 3. Should I be looking for a Founder who is a kickass programmer? 4. Should we consider switching the development platform to the one that my other Developer Founder is comfortable with. Because even if we want to manage a Rails developer, my partner may not be able to do justice because he is not too well versed with the platform himself

Any kind of advice would be helpful. Please advise!!!