A few months ago, I got tired of ASP.Net. I was tired of developers who depended on server-side controls, the Microsoft ajax implementations (as opposed to under-the-hood javascript ajax), excessive use of session and view state. My preferred method of coding which relies more on the html than on the ârunat=serverâ attribute, was considered old fashioned.
So, I wanted to look at something else. In my mind, Asp.net was getting too bloated and heavy. I started learning Ruby on Rails. RoR is a fantastic framework which integrates testability and maintainability. Rails is the frameworkâRuby is the language. Itâs easy to set up an Model View Controller site very quickly. I love Rails, but I hate Ruby. I had to lean how to do everything over again in Ruby. It was like learning to speak a new languageâeven the simple things were hard.
Then, I looked at the ASP.net MVC framework that was released earlier this year. The MVC framework is like Rails for ASP. It keeps aspects of ASP.Net that I really like (like master pages and C#) and moves away from the bulky server-side, viewstate heavy, controls (like the DataGrid) that slow down ASP.Net performance.
My faith in ASP.Net is restored. My brief foray into the hip and trendy world of Ruby development has given way to working on Microsoft code again.
Iâve been using the MVC framework in a few projects now. Iâve started writing a Chinese Dictionary application (using the CEDict database) and am enjoying every minute of it. I donât know if Iâll every put this site live, but coding it is helping me learn the finer points of the framework.
There are some great MVC tutorials here:
The best video tutorial (to start off with) is âCreating a Movie Database Application with ASP.NET MVCâ.
