Here’s my particular situation…
I have a decent amount of experience with webforms, and I must say, a lot of it has been pretty frustrating. I like that there are lots of built-in controls, but then I discover that they don’t quite do what I want, out of the box. I end up rolling my own controls (that inherit from the built-in controls), such as GridViewThatCanSortItself or GridViewThatHasASelectionColumn (these may not have been the actual names, but you get the idea). I’ve often wondered, while struggling mightily to build such classes, whether figuring out the often convoluted event model was worth it. My attempts to use css to style things have been frustrating as well. There are some ASP.NET controls that will result in one html tag for one set of attributes and a different tag with another set of attributes. You don’t realize this until you notice your css only works half the time.
So, my brain starts to wonder, could ASP.NET MVC be the answer? Reading some of the posts on SO has basically given me the impression that, while webforms definitely has its issues, I’d only be trading one set of problems for another. It even seems like Microsoft is trying to talk me out of it:
Quote from the asp.net site (http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc/tutorial-01-cs.aspx)
ASP.NET MVC…works well for Web applications that are supported by large teams of developers and Web designers who need a high degree of control over the application behavior.
That is really not me. Most of my projects are relatively small, and I’m usually the only programmer. I sometimes need to create very custom or unusual UI’s, but I definitely don’t have a team of programmers who can build components for me.
There is also the issue of javascript. I have a definite working knowledge of html and css, but I can’t say the same for javascript. As clumsy and bloated as they are, I’ve been able to do some smooth enough looking things with UpdatePanels. I’m not sure how much time I’d need to spend just learning the javascript to be able to handle even simple AJAX scenarios in ASP.NET MVC.
I’m about to start working on a relatively simple and small web app, so now would be the time to take the plunge if I’m going to take the plunge. This app will use a SQL Server Express (2005 or 2008) back-end, and I’m thinking of also trying out SqlMetal as an ORM solution. So, that’s already one thing I’m going to have to learn, although I at least have experience with–and really like–LinqToXml and LinqToObject. The pages of the web app will have some data grids (some with link columns), input boxes, labels, drop-down lists, check boxes, radio buttons, and submit/action buttons. I don’t foresee anything more complicated than that. There will be about six or seven pages total.
Questions:
Given my experience, how painful will it be to learn ASP.NET MVC? Will it be worth it?
I’ve read some earlier questions comparing webforms to MVC, so I’m curious, How has MVC evolved over the past year or so? Is there anything new that would make the learning curve less steep?
Do I literally have to write code to generate all html by hand or are there code/libraries readily available in the community to assist with the process? (I know I read something about “html helpers”–that may be what I’m asking about here.)
Any other advice?
Update
Another question that occurred to me: Is the transition from ASP.NET webforms to MVC anything like going from standard WPF (using code-behind) to MVVM? I found learning WPF itself to be pretty challenging (and I still couldn’t say I really get everything about it), but learning to work with WPF using the MVVM pattern was a relatively painless transition. So, I’m wondering how similar a jump it is to go from webforms to ASP.NET MVC.
My advice is to work through the Nerd Dinner Tutorial from the first chapter of Professional ASP.NET MVC (and then buy the whole book, it’s great) to get a feel for how it fits together and how it works for you. This covers most of what you are concerned about above.
You will have to get your hands dirty with regards working with raw HTML but this is no way near as terrifying as it may sound. Especially as you’re having issues where Web Forms takes control.