At the day job I’m the sole developer and maintainer of a legacy ASP/VBScript system. Yes, ASP/VBScript. No, not .NET. And yes, it’s driving me insane. The code contains around 42000 lines of VBSCript drivel and 30000 lines of supporting Python code.
The other day I told my boss that I thought we should really, really consider rewriting the application. The existing one is getting cumbersome, hard to maintain, and let’s face it; it’s sucking my soul dry. My suggestion for a new platform is, for a lot of reasons, Ruby on Rails.
My boss was, not unexpectedly, hesitant to say “Sure Jakob, we’ll halt development while you use the next 6 months to rewrite what we already have”. However he was openminded enough to have me try and persuade one of the owners of the company who is a (or at least used to be) techie. Today I met with that owner, prepared to answers question ranging from “but does it scale” over “but what about the performance” to “but how will we ever be able to hire new developers”. It went pretty well.
The bottom line is that I am now looking for an outsider to champion our rewrite. Basically some expert with multiple, deployed Ruby on Rails applicaitons under their belt, who we can fly into Copenhagen, hold a one day seminar/discussion and tell me, my boss, and the owner, why this rewrite is a good idea, what issues we need to be wary of, and perhaps even guide us in a direction that’ll lead to eternal Rails bliss.
Update: I’ve finally managed to pry at least a single specific requirement from the owner: Whoever we get in here to persuade us, must have deployed real, live, revenue-creating production sites in both PHP and Rails. We’re apparently interested in hearing about the differences and benefits of those two approaches.
If you’re up for this, do get in touch with at jakob@mentalized.net or jakob@biq.dk.
wow…sounds great! I hope you find somebody that can help you.
I have done a couple of rails, but only ‘on the side’, not any large scale proffesional stuff (yet)…(www.strongside.dk)
I hope the rewrite will be a success…we need more rails in Denmark
I’m in the almost the exact same situation at my job (even down to the asp/vb part). I’d be curious to know how you handled the conversation with your boss and the “owners”. What were some of the points you tried to use to “sell” them on rails? I find the differences between “bosses” and “developers” pretty interesting when it comes to considering new technologies. Broadly speaking developers usually care about beautiful, maintainable, fun code while bosses are usually concerned about scalability, performance, new hires. Are there good ways to get these two groups to better understand each other? Could Rails be part of that solution? It’s good to know there are others out there in similar situations.
Thought this would be a good opportunity to have a look at the business perspective of using Ruby on Rails for the enterprise. The Business Case for Ruby on Rails inspired me to see what has happened since December last year. Mentalized.net: One day w...