The Diminishing Returns of Technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns

I have seen a colleague implement a relatively simple Web Application using Spring MVC, Maven and Hibernate.

It's all fine for me, the problem is that in the project almost no one knows these technologies. I wonder what these "add-on" technologies enable us to do, that we could not do with the basic JSP and JDBC Java frameworks, and with a simple javac/jar statement to compile and build a .war.

I personally I tend to be very conservative when it comes to adopting technology. There is always a setup time, a learning curve and the risk of having to deal with incompatibilities and bugs.

Of course all this sounds very luddite, but we are in this business to earn money for the client, not to build artwork.

Technology adoption has a cost and side effects that should not be underestimated.

To me, simplicity is the greatest technology of all.