Please help with the reasoning, client wants to switch to .NET | Hacker News Reader

Please help with the reasoning, client wants to switch to .NET

docs.google.com

7 pointsivovnenko8 comments

I've discovered a near fool-proof way to deal with clients that suddenly come up with demands like this.

I quote them a price 33% higher.

Never once despite the most insistent argument that it just had to be done the new way has this ever failed(1). "Oh, you mean is costs more?! Never mind then...", is the usually response. Once, I had a client go with someone else who promised what they asked. I heard later that it was quite a disaster.

(1) I've had a guy tell me that using a certain technology was a matter of national security and then change his mind to save $1500.

That's a good tactic although I've also had clients who feel like more $$ means better quality. I've been in meetings where someone says that they're looking for a certain level of quality and so they're willing to pay more for it -- even if the greater spend doesn't necessarily equate to true quality when all is said and done.

So if I were to go to that same individual with this tactic they'd jump on it. Scary, but true.

Then make sure the extra cost you quote is enough to make it worth your while on the off chance that they do.

I completely don't understand the question.

If you have good reasons for not wanting to go with .NET, you have no need to be asking us for reasons.

If, on the other hand, you don't have good reasons, then what's the point?

The key is in the text added here:

> The biggest advantage that outweighs them all, do you and your team have more experience in the Java stack or the .NET stack. Push harder for that stack because it will be cheaper for the client if you don’t have to learn a new stack. <- is your company / team capable of writing .NET software today, or would a reschooling be in order ?

To which the OP replied:

> exactly, but its not good enough for the client

So the OP is looking for reasons, and the OP isn't best qualified to offer reasons not to use .NET because of lack of familiarity with .NET. This is why the OP is asking here for information to support his decision rather than information to make his decision.

Off topic: Please tell the client to fire the "IT guy" that suggested SharePoint. Now.

Back to the original question, why are you trying to build a CMS from scratch? The project sounds like a customer facing marketing site. Is it giant brochure (web site), or does it actually do something (web app)? If it's a giant brochure and the client just needs to edit some pictures here and there, there are plenty of CMSes available on the market for Java and .NET. My company recently switched to WordPress for our marketing site because we realised we were wasting too much time reinventing the wheel in .NET for a mostly static marketing site.

Now, if it's a web app, I would recommend going with whatever technology that talks to their back end the easiest, which in this case, sounds like the client is already using Java. I wouldn't want to try to get Mono to work on Linux, or switch to Windows hardware just to run a .NET web app, although I much prefer C# over Java.

I'm commenting here since I can't edit a Google doc at work. Maybe I misunderstand the question, but if we are talking about content-driven external-facing sites, the development platform is the wrong place to start the conversation. That implies building a CMS from scratch which is a terrible idea--it would take longer, cost more, be less secure, and less flexible, than using a well-established open source CMS. There's no reason to develop a custom web CMS from scratch anymore unless it is the core product of the company (examples: Reddit, Stack Overflow, Facebook, Twitter). Start with their content and then find an open-source CMS that can do what they want between the core functionality and any contributed modules.

I, also, cannot edit the doc at the office. I agree with you 100%, the language and platform is not what the client needs to be concerned about -- its the features, business cases, and what they 'need'.

If this is one of those anti-Microsoft zealotry things, then I'm really disappointed. Their tool chain may be proprietary, but with things like NuGet and .NET MVC spawning from inside the belly of the beast, I can't vilify them one bit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com