

Ask YC: To learn or to outsource? - getunstuck

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>So following are my questions, so that we can get unstuck:<p>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<p>Any kind of advice would be helpful. Please advise!!!
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kalendae
I vote for #3

mostly due to feeling that if you are asking these questions instead of just
jumping in and learning it, it is probably not for you. And from the limited
information you have provided, I would be wary of going forward with your
'other developer' with the platform he is comfortable with. I would think a
great developer would not even put you in this kind of position. Perhaps I'm
being unfair, but is there anything preventing him from making the case for a
different platform or learning rails? and plus it's rails, not like he needs
to crack open some COBOL.

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barry-cotter
You can burn time or money, and you may be able to substitute equity for
money.

If you're the business guy and your co-founder is "more inclined to manage"
_you have no dedicated coder_. As such you're probably already circling the
drain. Really, outsourcing something like this is a big risk. You won't know
it in your bones, and if it breaks it'll take you longer to fix it if you're
just learning it than if you wrote it.

Code it yourself.

My impression from this post is that you're up the faecal watercourse and need
to start paddling.

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getunstuck
Thanks for the responses, One very important thing I forgot to mention was
that, both of us have full time jobs, does that warrant outsourcing as an
option?

