ASP.NET MVC Beta.

[lightng]

What do people think of it?

[NickFitz]

I haven't looked at it, but if it helps ASP.NET developers move away from the framework's existing utterly broken approach to web app development then it has to be a good thing.

Mind you, I'm still not totally convinced that MVC is itself the best pattern for web apps - I'm sure there's a better pattern, but MVC seems to be the least-broken pattern we have at the moment.

When I finally work out how it ought to be done, I'll let you all know

[NickFitz]

Mind you, I'm still not totally convinced that MVC is itself the best pattern for web apps - I'm sure there's a better pattern, but MVC seems to be the least-broken pattern we have at the moment.

I should explain that this comment isn't directed specifically at ASP.NET - there are numerous other web app frameworks that wholeheartedly embrace the MVC pattern. Ones that I have used include Django (Python-based) and Symfony (PHP-based), and various application-specific implementations of my own using a variety of languages and platforms.

I just get that feeling that MVC for web apps isn't quite perfect - it's good enough, but something inelegant seems to be in there. It's what Martin Fowler would describe as a "code smell" - except in this case it's more of a "pattern smell", or to be even more accurate (given that MVC isn't really a pattern so much as a term describing the agglomeration of a number of patterns) an "architecture smell".

IMHO, YMMV, ATUD

[minestrone]

Is this the first MVC framework for ASP? If so that is madness.

Anyway on MVC I think that it is the browser that is the weak link, MVC just makes it more managable. There are quite a few different types of framework now for java but I still believe that MVC is the better.

Still don't know why many applications these days are web apps and not installed GUIs.

[lightng]

I think this is the first Microsoft touted MVC for ASP.NET but I could be wrong. I've used MVC before for other ASP.NET projects but its been a home-brew version - also I've looked at its implementation in CakePHP.

I can see whats good about MVC but I'm not sure how well this will be taken up by the ASP.NET community particularly those who haven't had exposure to other web languages/frameworks. I can see there may be uproar at moving away from server controls and back to what looks like classic AsP when creating "views" code.

Nickfitz, I like your modified phrase "Pattern smell" lol. Bearing in mind that I am an MVC baby, what do you think is wrong with MVC?

[Shimano105]

Wasn't the UIP pattern form Microsoft an attempt at MVC?

[lightng]

Wasn't the UIP pattern form Microsoft an attempt at MVC?

You might be right. Theres also an open-source project called Monorail for MVC on ASP.NET that was inspired by Ruby on Rails.

[eyetie]

What do people think of it?

Combined with Dynamic Data/ADO.NET Entity Framework, it all smells like a bad Xerox of Ruby concepts.