Re: [Haskell-cafe] What happens if you get hit by a bus?

I think the "truck-factor" implications of the programming language as dwarfed by the implications of everything else in the project. Any project of any significant size is going to have a huge amount of project-specific information tucked up inside the programmers head. It doesn't matter if there are a million other programmers who know the language you used, or only a dozen- if you're the only one who knows how things were done, and more importantly, why they were done that way, and you get hit by a truck, then your boss has a big problem. Whether there are millions of candidate replacement programmers, or only dozens, none of them had the project-specific knowledge you had. Finding a replacement who knows the language is the least of his problems. On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Colin Adams wrote:

I would think there were plenty of Haskell programmers ready to jump in as replacements.

On 16 December 2011 15:37, Michael Litchard wrote:

...

I'm learning what it means to be a professional Haskell programmer, and contemplating taking on side jobs. The path of least resistance seems to be web applications, as that is what I do at work. I've been investigating what some web developers have to say about their trade. One article addresses the question above. His answer was that he uses RoR which has a large community and he is therefore easily replaceable. My question, for freelancers in general, and web developers in particular is this: How do you address this question? I imagine potential clients would need to be assuaged of their fears that hiring me would lead to a lock-in situation at best, and no one to maintain a code base at worst. Lock-in won't be part of my business model, also sooner or later we part ways with the client. When the client wonders, "What happens then?", what is a good answer?

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