I didn't mean to say that developing with what might be considered 'experimental' tech as inappropriate. I think that sometimes breaking away from 'best practices' and 'how we do things in this company' is exactly the kind of thing that can create significant savings.

I think there's a lot of entropy with tools and techniques on the tech industry generally, and more so in actual companies where cultures don't change as rapidly.

I am often both playing with experimental technologies and pushing the envelope vs best programming practices. If you look at the approach of LedgerSMB's use of PostgreSQL (see http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2011/10/design-of-ledgersmb... and http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2011/10/introduction-to-sod... for more) and also being critical of our approaches (see http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2011/10/soda-in-ledgersmb-1...).

The thing though is that a lot of this occurs within a framework of evaluating what is not working and rethinking it. On the whole though, this is what pushing the envelope is all about. Note here we are often bucking (rather than embracing) many trends, though we do look to trends to pick pieces that make sense.