
Ask HN: Am I wrong when manager forgets what she said? - nexhalle
I was assigned a ticket to write a program for the system. I asked my manager whether I could write in my favorite programming language (so that I could finish that as soon as possible). She said it&#x27;s ok. Then I spent quite a lot of time to understand  how to interact with other systems to write the tool, and it finally worked. I prepared a demo, I&#x27;m proud of that.<p>Somehow the language issue came up. Some member in the team said I shouldn&#x27;t have written that in that X language, because no one could maintain it. In the demo session, I couldn&#x27;t remember if anyone looked at what the tool could do and&#x2F;or the requirements of the actual problem, because it&#x27;s all about writing the tool in another language. I said it&#x27;s ok to rewrite, even in shell scripts, and I tried to explain that the language doesn&#x27;t really matter, as the interface is still the same when agreed, I suggested the team to use the current tool while another one is being written. (But...)<p>I think it&#x27;s unfair because I did follow the manager agreement. But it&#x27;s ok, I did rewrite the tool in the language Z.<p>My question is that whether it&#x27;s my mistake when the manager changed his requirement (without admitting that.) I hadn&#x27;t got this kind of issue before this time. Did that happen to you too? How do you talk with the manager?<p>Thanks a lot
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byoung2
You should have noted the conversation with your manager in the ticket at the
time the conversation took place, with an @mention so she would get notified.
That said, depending on how technical your boss is, she may not be the
appropriate person to ask about language choice. If she is the CTO, obviously
yes, but if you report to a Director of Product maybe not. And it is always a
good idea to check with your team before picking a new language.

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chadcmulligan
welcome to IT :-). I usually wait for something to be asked for twice before
doing, cause the first time is often just noise (oh you really want that).
Something that takes a bit of work like this I'd usually confirm in an email
asking if you really want this, and are happy if I do it this way. Rule of
thumb when dealing with management: if its not written down it didn't happen.

Most places have a set of languages / tools they use because everyone knows
them, unless there's an extraordinary reason usually stick to these even if
there are better tools around. If you want everyone to start using a new tool,
then one way is to get some buy in by others, then have a pilot project to
evaluate the new tool, weigh the pros and cons etc.

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blackflame7002
Yea it's best to ask design questions over email because then you have a
record for both parties to refer back to if either forgets. But in general,
you have to understand that solving a problem...is only half of the problem.
The other half is keeping that problem solved which means the code needs to be
maintainable.

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drallison
Of course we all want you to identify language X and language Z. :-)

The choice of the language in which to code a tool ought to be done by the
programmer, perhaps in consultation with the manager. The fact the choice of
language is an issue suggests that the back bench of your IT group if fairly
weak. Don't most programmers program in all of the popular languages? And if a
language is new, don't they become facile in the language in a day or so?

