IMHO, having done a fair whack of sales and negotiation in my work, the best way to suss these things out is to hit them back with questions. "Before I answer,

IMHO, having done a fair whack of sales and negotiation in my work, the best way to suss these things out is to hit them back with questions. "Before I answer, can you clarify if we're talking about MVC as the term was used for Smalltalk applications or as it's used now to refer to web frameworks?" If they look at you blankly about Smalltalk, you know what kind of answer you're supposed to give. If they smile and chuckle, you get to nerd the fuck out. :-)