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Comment by keyle | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, I'm going to say MVC.NET. Simply because it's something you can bet on. And it's also something you will always find smart people be able to help you improve and fix your product.

I'd stay away from newish technologies like node.js (even though I love it), also I'd stay away from frameworks that have had their days (CakePHP). NodeJs has fell over a few times on my dev server for unknown reasons. When we talk enterprise app, that's just a big risk.

I mean you seem to know php. So maybe PHP is not bad to keep betting on. Make your own home brew of MVC framework that is lightweight and fits your needs. CakePHP comes with the sources.

Also Code Igniter is a framework I respect, once again in PHP. Developers for it seem harder to find though. Finally there is Zend. I prefer Code Igniter over Zend because I find Zend too complex, but it's also a perfectly good option.

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Really? You know, I'd consider MVC.NET for my startup, but here's a few snags I keep hitting. Perhaps you can provide insight in how to get around them?

- Cost. I have found no way to accurately estimate what the development and deployment will cost me initially, nor when I need to scale. BizSpark makes it affordable for a very short time all things considered, but it's really sorta like a free crack rock. - Linux. I simply don't feel comfortable deploying anything publicly on Windows. It might be more secure now than in the past, but my experience is on Linux and I feel like it's a whole new world to come up to speed on the linux side. It's almost as if Microsoft should have a ".Net for Startups who are used to *nx OSes" class. - Linux. I develop on and am most comfortable with Linux. I'd have a hard time spending my days on Windows 7.

Other than that, certain features of .NET do indeed look interesting. At least C# as a language has improved over its parent (Java).

Amazon provide Windows hosting on the cloud.

Personally I host MVC 3 on a Windows server 2008 R2 with Hetzner for €65 per month.

The Bizspark programme will help you to keep the licensing cost down to pretty much zero in the short run so I don't think this should be a major concern.

Like another commenter suggests you can look at Mono which will let you run MVC 3 (with the Razor view engine), however note that EntityFramework isn't supported and you would be advised to start from scratch in Mono and port to .NET actual later if you chose that route rather than the other way.

Well, be sure to look at the Mono project. ASP.NET MVC ships with Mono, so a lot of it should work fine on Linux.

I ran my (slightly profitable) side project on mono and ASP.NET MVC2 for about 5 months before switching to a Windows server on EC2.

Best thing I ever did ... sure it costs 3x what I was paying for a VPS, but it has been rock solid compared to a number of resource leak issues with Mono, and the fact that I can admin a windows box with googling everything I need to do.

If you are developing a for-profit venture and the cost of deploying on Windows vs Linux is a breaking point for a .NET project then I'd suggest you look at the business plan again and decide if it has enough profit in it.

I have looked at Mono, along with MonoDevelop. I think Mono and MonoDevelop might work well for the experienced .NET developer who is interested in using his/her skills on Linux, but not for the newb .NET developer. There's just too much setup/etc to have to know in order to get going.

Also, has any startup actually deployed a large scale web app on Mono with ASP.NET?

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