Freelancing Gods 2008

A quick question to fellow coders…

Unsurprisingly, there’s a dearth of Ruby developers in Cambodia. I imagine the situation is pretty similar in other developing nations. PHP and Visual Basic seem to be the common languages in the small tech community here.

I’m currently working on building a website for one of the local NGOs here – and of course, Rails is my preferred framework. But looking forward, I don’t wish to be providing ongoing support for the site – and the client shares that sentiment. So to make it easier for local developers to take over, should I be considering using PHP for the project instead?

I have offered to help the IT guy at this organisation learn Ruby, but he won’t be there forever as well. And they’re a small NGO - they don’t have the cash to throw around hiring super-skilled developers. The project itself is pro-bono.

So, what would you do, given the circumstances?

(And for the record, it’s very likely I’ll stick with Ruby – using the Radiant CMS - but I’m interested in others’ opinions.)