Re: Witango-Talk: .NET vs Witango vs. Oracle

[Robert Garcia]

On May 19, 2005, at 7:32 PM, Phil Wade wrote: "Because no one has heard of it" is such a bizzare argument.� Yes people use it all the time but in my experience it is not the reason for making a decision.� It is just a convenient argument that is hard to rebuke so you need to have a strategy ready for when it comes up. Every new client anyone gets has not heard of them until they are introduced to them for the first time by somebody, but their intelligence and reasoning power manages to kick in and they get past it.� You need to sell your own Company to get the work, so why is the software tools you use any different.� Sell it as you would your own skills.� The IT industry has matured a lot since the days of FUD and hype.��Start making the argument about deliverables, cost of delivery, cost of ownership, meeting deadlines, risk management, code consistency, etc and stop the argument being about technology.�� Your preaching to the choir. I agree, and I think for the most part, their argument is not valid, but they do have valid concerns. 1. If BigHead falls of the map, where do they find other witango developers. I have had several clients look for others as a back up, or on occasion not happy with me. And they instantly see how much fewer resources and developers are available with witango experience. Developers for other languages are a dime a dozen. And there is an endless stream of people/designers/developers that will counsel them against witango, cuz it is not widely used. 2. The people I deal with, have to put up with the same thing when they go to more upper management or board, and they have to answer it is written in Witango. Everyone is an "expert" these days. And the middle management guy I have sold, has to get the same grief from his management. In my experience, they SPECIFICALLY ask the language(s) being used, and want to feel warm and fuzzy about it for compatibility, and sellability of their investment. Make it about how you will perform the task.��If they want the "name brand technology" or Standards based solution then you can offer them J2EE.��The Witango Java Framework and compiler were developed for this reason.� A few clicks and the application can be deployed to a J2EE server.� You can develop with the Dev Studio and deploy to JBoss, BEA, WebSphere, SUN, etc.� If a company has heard of .Net then they have definitely heard of J2EE. The Witango Java Framework and compiler were developed for this reason.� Tell them that it is a J2EE application. J2EE is not a valid argument to them. Even though Witango will compile to J2EE, it still requires a completely proprietary framework, and licensing. IMHO, might as well deploy on Witango server, not worry about the extra headache of Java compiling. The arguments you have given have worked very successfully with smaller clients. But these Fortune 1000 types are different, and these arguments don't work as well. They want to know that they have a lot of options with the app server they choose, to move to other developers if necessary. To easily move to inhouse development. Even though I could tell them that Witango is extremely easy to train on, they just know that when they go to their normal pool of resources, they see little to zero info re: witango, and a ton on the others. Its not even about money, which is obvious when they want to rewrite in .NET, and the witango system has performed excellently, and has not gone down even once over this whole time. In the scheme of things the cost of Witango is not the issue.� As a percentage of the overall project costs it is usually in low single digit percentage points.� In a $60K project Witango is less than 5% of the cost but is probably responsible for a 30-50% cost saving in the development of the application. You are correct, it is not the issue to this company. That is not my point, my point is to get witango in the hands of more and more budding developers, so there are more resources and a pool of developers for the system. Why are most developers choosing PHP and JSP and even sometimes webobjects instead. It is not because it is better, it is because they don't know about it in the first place, or they can't afford it. <not speaking on behalf of witango> At the end of the day if a company is willing to pay you 30-50% more to develop a site in .Net, smile, be�courteous, polite and say thank you for the extra revenue as no amount of marketing, brand name awareness or reduction in price is going to help them improve their decision making process.� ; ) </not speaking on behalf of witango> I hear you. And I am not worried about my future, these people are more interested in me, than the language. But I would love to see this not be an issue some day. It just doesn't happen with clients, it happens with vendors and stuff also. Some examples: I have had times when I found a bug in an ODBC driver, or a COM object or something, and I report to the company via tech support. I have done my homework, and I know where the problem is, but when they ask how I am using it, I try not to say witango, if I do, they have almost always said, "What is that?" and then proceed to say they don't support, or it goes to the bottom of the list. If the bug was with PHP or .NET, I get a much better response. This has happened many times over the years. Available tools: because witango is not known, available third party tools are usually not tested with witango, and examples integration help is not provided. Here is a recent example: I had to build an app that allowed inline editing of text for non technical users. I wanted them to be able to add simple HTML formatting without HTML. I found this outstanding DHTML tool called editlet. (http://www.editlet.com/) It provides an inline HTML editor that is completely configurable, so that you can have users create and edit html, with custom constraints. The code includes a spell checker, image manager, and sample code to integrate with any app server. JSP, ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, and PHP, but no witango. Well, I went through their ASP examples, and rewrote what I needed in Witango, a few extra hours of work. This is not an isolated example. Just look at what tools/components are available for witango, and what is available for others. I think all of these issues go into a developer's choice for the language they choose. Not to mention the jobs that are available for developers to jump on. I am not making a case for others. I want Witango to thrive. I want my investment in witango to retain its value. Another example, I use another tool frequently, REALBasic. In the beginning, it was much like witango. Very small and not heard of. But they have done a good job of marketing to new developers, and they have made a dent. For example, they offered free licenses to there standard edition for windows to licensed users of Visual Basic. They got the word out and got a huge response. It is true that there are many more samples and resources on the net for VB, but RB has grown in to a community where there are a good amount of components/resources available for new developers. I haven't even been able to login to the developer.witango.com site like I used to since the change. And when I ask to mail my login, it just give me a white page with a header and footer and no email to me, but that is another issue. ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf