Question

I ask this not to start anything negative. Rather, after looking at ASP.NET MVC it hit me (duh) that I am not using controls like on webforms but coding html markup by hand (gasp.)

Is this a move backwards? I remember coming from classic asp to asp.net and dragging and dropping controls, creating a bll, etc. now it seems I am doing all that by hand, again, like classic, except I have good mvc design.

I guess I’m trying to figure out why this is a move forwards from what was a rapid development environment to what appears to be more tedious.

EDIT:

I always thought Visual Studio .NET was one huge reason to go with ASP.NET with all its controls and automation. Now with MVC it is makes me think it’s just like any other MVC with a decent IDE, since I’m doing everything by hand now.

Answer 1

• “Classic” ASP.NET hasn’t gone anywhere – you can still use it if that’s what you want or need
• Though you may or may not get “drag-and-drop” functionality, between AutoComplete and the various render helpers you can easily get a working view in minutes
• Creating the views is only a small fraction of the overall project
• Even in ASP.NET I rarely used the visual editor. I always felt that it got in my way and made decisions for me, wrongly.