Well in this instance it looks like he lied to his client.
But as a broader point, how much information should you be giving your clients about technical decisions?
I mean, RoR is rails is omakase so there's a bunch of stuff you could change around to make it quite a different framework. Like switching the template library or ORM around. This might make it difficult if they had a second developer in mind to pick up the project in the future if they are not familiar with these.
I've had situations in the past where I've developed software with PHP5 and taken advantage of the features and then had clients who got annoyed when they tried to migrate to a cheaper web host who only supported PHP4 and not PDO etc.
> But as a broader point, how much information should you be giving your clients about technical decisions?
I explicitly list the technologies I use for a project. Let's say a webapp: Django (Python 2.7), HTML5, CSS3 (SaSS), JavaScript (jQuery) together with two short sentences explaining that the (to the time of development) current versions of the libraries will be used.
From this point there are two possibilities: The client has objections or doesn't care. If there are objections it is likely from someone who will maintain the code. If he doesn't care I wasted 4 lines.
I once had a client which was convinced by his nephew (he recently started studying CS, so he obviously knew what he was talking about) that I did everything wrong using Django, I should have used Node.js. Even a discussion if I would have to rewrite everything in node emerged.
I prefer to explain to my client what I will use and put it in the contract. Those 4 lines saved me a lot of trouble.
This seems like a sensible approach, I will be more thorough in future. I assume you also inform the client if you change your mind about a minor library?
I only had to change libraries because the client changed the specs of a project. In this case he receives an updated list. (We once were asked to integrate something which required us to add some JS libraries for faster development)
Minor version updates are communicated with the sysops if they exist. If we host the project there is no extra information.
But as a broader point, how much information should you be giving your clients about technical decisions?
I mean, RoR is rails is omakase so there's a bunch of stuff you could change around to make it quite a different framework. Like switching the template library or ORM around. This might make it difficult if they had a second developer in mind to pick up the project in the future if they are not familiar with these.
I've had situations in the past where I've developed software with PHP5 and taken advantage of the features and then had clients who got annoyed when they tried to migrate to a cheaper web host who only supported PHP4 and not PDO etc.