While I disagree with Marvin about writing "one to throw away" (that is so 80's, and I was there), he has a good point about some things perhaps not being worth the time and expense. I feel that way about automated testing for my clients, but it's because they don't have public sites with thousands of users. A bug is not a big deal, I just fix it and we move on. Please, no flames...
I handle the "what if I were hit by a bus" problem by making sure that my client owns his domain, pays for the host and other services directly, has all passwords needed, has access to the code, and in general has everything he needs to hand the project to someone else (this also makes it real easy to fire clients if necessary). I have taken over projects where not a single one of those conditions applied, everything being owned and handled solely by the prior developer. Prying some of those away from an absent developer was not easy in some cases, it would have been impossible if he had been hit by a bus. So, solo (and non-solo) developers: put your client's interests first and handle these parts of the "bus problem" now if you have them. I second Rob's endorsement of Rails as itself part of the solution. I have been a little concerned that in a current project I have written some seriously complex code for complex behavior, and no one else could maintain or modify it, but a designer with only a little Rails experience went in and made some mods needed to replace the theme I stole from another site with Bootstrap. Still, I should write a theory of operation document about the DSL I created and the non-obvious things I had to do to get what I wanted inside Rails. That would probably be worth the time. Good topic, Chris, though I'm sorry for your loss that prompted it. Maybe we should form a "Bus Society" so we can point to each other as backups in case the worst happens. Scott -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
