I’ve been working in tech for a long while now. Over ten years! (That’s seventy in dog years!) And one thing I’ve noticed is that, especially when you immediately get into tech, there’s a lot of concern over the exact tools you’re using. The impact of choosing python over ruby, the weight of choosing a blue skies project vs. brown skies (what an image). But … after working on some of these projects, I honestly don’t think it matters overmuch.
I’ll always emphasize the importance of choosing the right tool for the job, and making sure that we’re doing the correct thing. But the actual attitude of the people working on the problem, and whether or not everyone is on the right page, matters so much more than things like the tools and the sanity of the person who initially designed something. I’ve had more successful projects working on OpenNMS (look it up! … don’t look it up) than projects running directly in Puppet (which I don’t hate! It’s pretty good!). And it was because of the team and the approach that we took.
With the right surroundings, you can make anything “portable enough” and “replicable enough” that it can be reliable. With the right group of people, planning and time, you can move mountains.
And without those … nothing will happen. The mountains will fall into the sea, and the seas will boil. The tides will rise and wipe out all of civilization! … Or, perhaps, a single prod database will fail catastrophically. One of those.
So. Back up your stuff. And do try to build things properly. But don’t worry too much about your tooling - build the right team, and have the right people, and it will come. :)