Hi Paul, I agree with what you have said - web forms was revolutionary, and MVC learnt a lot because of the experiences the team had. I also think it would have worked the opposite way - had MVC been released first, it might have changed how/whether Web Forms was created. I also agree that Web Forms has many good qualities and makes a good choice in many situations.
I think there are two dimensions to this - the point of view of a developer who has to choose between the two, and the point of view of Microsoft, who have to maintain the two. >From Microsoft's point of view, having both makes sense. Microsoft do a good job of not picking favorites and instead just provide options. Want web to feel like Win Forms programming? Here you go. Want it to feel like Rails? Here you go. It makes for them to maintain both while there's an audience. It's good that they are aware of the MVC learning curve and have a solution for this. >From the point of view of a developer confronted with a choice between the two, I can see that there are cases when Web Forms would win out. However - and this is just me - I think a lot of the reasons for choosing web forms are short-term focussed: - The team are familiar with Web Forms - Introducing MVC would require training and we don't have time - The UI is very grid and data focussed, and we can drag and drop our way to our heart's content - We want to make use of in-house frameworks and code that build on Web Forms - We're capturing lots of data and viewstate would really be handy - There's a specific third-party control that we just can't live without For me this means I'd be making a tactical decision for my project to go with Web Forms - because of budget, time, etc. However, if I were to take a long term view, and I didn't have any of those short-term constraints, then ASP.NET MVC would generally be my default choice. In other words, I would* want* to use MVC, but I might *have* to use Web Forms. I don't spend enough time in the web space, so the hardest part for me is thinking of situations where Web Forms makes a good long term strategic choice, rather than just a tactical solution to a short-term time/budget constraint. I'd love to hear some examples of these situations if you have any. Paul On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Paul Glavich <[email protected]>wrote: > Hey Paul & rest of list, > > Webforms was and is not bad. At it's conception it was revolutionary. If > ASP. NET Mvc had come out first, it would have had less of a "known problem > space" to learn from and prolly would not be as good as it is now. In fact, > webforms will continue to play a huge part. > Microsoft is acutely aware of the current barrier in terms of learning > curve to start developing on the MSFT stack. ASP.NET Mvc doesn't really > help as it requires a good base understanding of frameworks and design > principles. Webforms has a good leg up here with rich controls to use, > purist and technical usage aside. However it still requires some framework > knowledge. > > At any rate, I love both. Webforms can and does work well. So does Mvc. > Both require more effort in different areas of the dev process. > > A good example is the update panel. This control is brain dead easy to > use, automatically caters for non js scenario but can transfer excessive > amounts of data and get tricky in complex situations. Mvc has no such > productivity boosting out of the box control. However u can do the same with > more effort but also yield great flexibility in the control of what goes > down the wire and interaction with ur page. So both can work with positives > and negatives either way. > > If webforms was a lot more extensible, would ur argument change? The team > is actively working towards this in future design considerations. > > > - Paul > > Sent from my iPhone > > On 19/03/2010, at 4:27 PM, Paul Stovell <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> As a completely unrelated note, one of the original crew on WebForms > sits down the hall from me - part of me wants to walk into his office, grab > him by the collar and say 'What were you thinking?!!!' > > Although I personally came to dislike the Web Forms model, I do think it > was innovative and an idea that deserved to be tried, and I'm sure the > people who worked on it were very smart. Even bad ideas deserve a chance to > see if they float - that's how we learn. I think the only mistake was > waiting this long to absorb the thinking of other communities and to try > something different. > > Paul > > > > On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Kean < <[email protected]> > [email protected]> wrote: > >> By MVC here I'm clearly talking about <http://ASP.NET>ASP.NET MVC, not >> the pattern. >> >> My point is that there is a huge barrier to entry to presentation patterns >> such as MVC, MVP and MVVM - that if Microsoft was to adopt these as the only >> way to develop Web and Client apps, we wouldn't be as successful. There is a >> huge market of developers (mainly web based) under what we call the 'breadth >> developer' that would be excluded by these advanced concepts. Hell if you'd >> told me just over 9 years ago (years before I joined Microsoft) that I >> needed to learn not only this new thing called .NET but also this pattern >> called MVC, I would have turned and run. I would have probably stayed with >> ASP (which what I was using at the time), before long moving to something >> like similar like PHP. While now I can look back at my naivety and realize >> now that there is a whole better way of developing software, I really think >> that developers need to come to that realization themselves, and not have it >> forced down their throat by someone else. >> >> (As a completely unrelated note, one of the original crew on WebForms sits >> down the hall from me - part of me wants to walk into his office, grab him >> by the collar and say 'What were you thinking?!!!') >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* <[email protected]>[email protected] >> [<[email protected]> >> [email protected]] on behalf of David Connors [<[email protected]> >> [email protected]] >> *Sent:* Thursday, March 18, 2010 9:12 PM >> >> *To:* ozDotNet >> *Subject:* Re: <http://ASP.NET>ASP.NET Web Forms vs MVC vs ... >> >> On 19 March 2010 13:44, David Kean < <[email protected]> >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Truthfully, if MVC came before WebForms, >>> >> >> It did by a significant margin - but just not on .NET. That kind of >> underscores the point that people are adopting it because it is new (at >> least in their minds) - or perhaps ready made on .NET. >> >> people wouldn't have flocked to the .NET platform like they did. There >>> was a reason that WebForms was so successful - it mimic'd the existing drag >>> and drop paradigm that VB6 developers were used to. >>> >> >> Or in otherwords, web forms was an exercise in marketing rather than >> good engineering. >> >> -- >> David Connors ( <[email protected]>[email protected]) >> Software Engineer >> Codify Pty Ltd - <http://www.codify.com>www.codify.com >> Phone: +61 (7) 3210 6268 | Facsimile: +61 (7) 3210 6269 | Mobile: +61 417 >> 189 363 >> V-Card: <https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors> >> https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors >> Address Info: <https://www.codify.com/contact> >> https://www.codify.com/contact >> >> > > > -- > Paul Stovell > > -- Paul Stovell
