If it kinda looks like a duck, why not just get a duck

Shortly after announcing the first drop of Nancy, my friend Mark Nijhof asked me

?one thing that keeps sounding in the back of my head is; why not use Sinatra instead??

The short answer to this is; If it makes more sense for you and your project to use Sinatra, then you should! However it is my experience that it?s not always that black and white when it comes the question ?why don?t you use???. The answer really depends on what type of developer you are and the surrounding circumstances.

Now let me clarify that Mark said he liked Nancy and that this was just a feeling he got while reading the post. This post has less to do with Mark and more to the discussion about ?why don?t you use??? since it is a repeating topic that pop back up every now and then.

Say you are doing contract work, either on your own or at an agency. Here is depends on two things; do you specialize at delivering software on a specific platform or do you target a wider audience? Second, does the client have any demands on the platform and technology stack that you use?? So the ability to choose technology stacks in either of these situations should be self evident. If you are in a position where both the client and employer lets you choose the best stack for the project then you are in a sweet position!

Imagine you are working in-house at a product company, should you just be able to pick any technology stack that you feel is the best for the task? Would you let your employees do that if you were the CEO? There are additional costs for training team members and you risk in getting way too many go-to-guys, the people that have a passion for a certain technology. And what if some of these guys were to leave? Then what? It?s not that easy to recruite people with cross-technology stack experience, especially those with senior skills in all of them.

I know that at the place where I work it would not be a good idea to start building out products using django, ruby, scala ? whatever ? simply because our organization could not handle it. At least not today. And who knows what it will be like in another year? A couple of years ago we wouldn?t have been able to use Kanban efficiently, but we matured over time and today we use it with great success.

I am a firm believer of ?use the right tool for the job?, but I am very aware that it?s not only the framework or programming language that defines what ?the right tool? is, there are lots of organizational and surrounding factors that all have a play in that.