@Rafael
Web Forms incorrect usage is one point. Another point is that I truly believe it does not serve web well. You are right, MVC forces us to archive good engineering practices.

But the problem is, it’s easy to do that, and a lot of people are doing crap on top of it. A lot of *developers* become used to do things in a bad way.

I think MVC is a more opinionated approach, and it can help us to achieve good engineering practices.

And that, my friend, is the *correct* logic to follow. Are you implying Webforms (or any “development language”) is better than WebForms for every task?

This is exactly my point, the best tool for a task is going to vary. That tool might be WebForms, static HTML, MVC, etc.

Saying tool X is better than tool Y in all scenarios is simply incorrect.

This blog post is littered with over 20 typos and misspellings. Ugh.

The one thing that developers often forget is that they get paid to solve problems, not re-invent wheels. So in order to solve problems, you must be willing to look at all possible solutions even if they take you out of your comfort zone.

You state that ASP.NET MVC “changes the way users need to expect how to use the application”

This is just incorrect. You can build anything in MVC that you can build in Webforms. It is just a lower level way of doing things that gives you more control over how things are done. Also you can have very functional editable grids in ASP.NET MVC that match or surpase the gridview and it’s ilk. Take a look at jqGrid, DataTables and or ExtJS grids.

Nice article. It echos my experience quite closely. I now do a lot of webforms development because I must, but I much prefer doing ASP.NET MVC.

A MVC website behaves nothing like an application and (nearly) solely as a basic html page. This is a huge divergence in usage from the way business applications are expected to function.

Your statement about having to redesign your whole website to accomondate their html / css comes from the lack of care in designing your website. If you take advantage of controls like the ListView control that allows you to very formally define clean html output it starts to become much easier to write CSS complient sites. It’s also important to take a seperation of concerns pattern into your web development, like the Model View Presenter (MVP) pattern which will stop you from using the code behind to mess with whats going on in the page in the wrong way.

Proper use of a tool is what makes it a good tool. MVC has it uses and so will WebForms and it will for a long time. I find it extremely unlikely that the MVC type development will take over business application development for 2 reasons, one being what I’ve mentioned numerous times already is that it changes the way users need to expect how to use the application, the second reason which this one makes me sad is the fact to develop with MVC you really do need to go back to understanding HTML, CSS, JavaScript (JQuery FTW) and write good clean markup which it seems the majority of ASP.NET developers that design IE6 sites cannot and carenot ever to do.

This is mostly incorrect if you are really not blind. The viewstate can be turned off for individual controls. And even fine tunning is possible in asp.net 4.0. With compression this is rarely an issue.

“sort of a turning point was when AJAX showed up. You make AJAX callback – You go through all stages for of page lifecycle. What?! I need that much to change so little.”

This is also incorrect, you can make json calls to web services and page methods easily if you need.

“I realised – and that was painfull – that WebForms does not force developers to write loosly coupled code. By providing, or betteer say: allowing, page or controls events it destroys seperation of concerns. Somehow view, control and business logic overlays each other. By adding ViewState it hides basic property of html protocol – it stateless. WebForm’s design make developers dumb. I am 100% serious!”

This depends to you. Just apply MVP pattern and you will have a nice seperated code with testability.

As a front end developer (yes that’s the XHTML/CSS/JavaScript dude) I go through ASP.NET hell every day. As a side job I develop on PHP platforms and frameworks such as Drupal / Wordpress and would love to work with these full time. For the record, I used to do old-fashioned ASP for a living (1999-2005).

I recently had to learn to become a SharePoint web developer at work. My expectations were high, but then the reality hit in that SharePoint is a 100 times worse compared to plain ASP.NET when it comes to the control you have of the HTML output.

Sadly, this is the Microsoft story over and over again. They keep neglecting standards and come up with their own in an attempt to dominate the market, but end up being a threat and hindrance to the development of the web. Take IE6 as an example. That piece of s*#t just won’t die! And it’s because of IE6 (and even IE7) that we don’t see advanced and rich user experiences dominating the web, even though it’s 2009!

I really don’t care what Microsoft comes up with to enable the business and data layers of a web application, as long as they leave the VIEW alone! Thankfully ASP.NET MVC is a step in the right direction, and so is the more standards compliant IE8. Unfortunately it will take some years still to shake off the damage done by ASP.NET WebForms as well as IE6 and IE7. Those years in web years will seem like a lifetime