Are technical topics no business topics?

I started to write this about a year ago - I think it's time to finish my earlier posts to get at least the basic ideas behind them in writing before I try to start new topics.

Every now and then I come across the silly notion, that technical decisions - like "Java Yes, Ruby No" - are considered to be "not of business relevance" and are to be left to the "IT department" since "the business folks wouldn't know anyway".

Apart from the inherent hubris from "IT" people with that attitude I think this point of view is rather short-sighted. If there are implications the business is not aware of it is the solution providers responsibility to inform the business people.

But - getting back to Java vs. Ruby style questions - to build a certain application with an estimated life-span of 6 month (e.g. because there is a legal requirement for exactly that time-span) might be a sensible thing to do in language 'Y' while it may be more sensible to assign two interns to do manual data corrections than to build an application using language 'X'.

You may substitute X and Y in the above paragraph with Ruby and Java respectivly according to your personal bias (or - for that matter - with any pair of programming languages) but the business people really should have a the last word in the decision.

ceterum censeo: We (including me) should really stop using the term "IT" ... if only I knew a suitable substitute ...