Should I migrate to ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I just listened to the StackOverflow team's 17th podcast, and they talked so highly of ASP.NET MVC that I decided to check it out.

But first, I want to be sure it's worth it. I already created a base web application (for other developers to build on) for a project that's starting in a few days and wanted to know, based on your experience, if I should take the time to learn the basics of MVC and re-create the base web application with this model.

Are there really big pros that'd make it worthwhile?

EDIT: It's not an existing project, it's a project about to start, so if I'm going to do it it should be now...

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I just found this

It does not, however, use the existing post-back model for interactions back to the server. Instead, you'll route all end-user interactions to a Controller class instead - which helps ensure clean separation of concerns and testability (it also means no viewstate or page lifecycle with MVC based views).

How would that work? No viewstate? No events?

Answer 1

If you are quite happy with WebForms today, then maybe ASP.NET MVC isn't for you.

I have been frustrated with WebForms for a really long time. I'm definitely not alone here. The smart-client, stateful abstraction over the web breaks down severely in complex scenarios. I happen to love HTML, Javascript, and CSS. WebForms tries to hide that from me. It also has some really complex solutions to problems that are really not that complex. Webforms is also inherently difficult to test, and while you can use MVP, it's not a great solution for a web environment...(compared to MVC).

MVC will appeal to you if... - you want more control over your HTML - want a seamless ajax experience like every other platform has - want testability through-and-through - want meaningful URLs - HATE dealing with postback & viewstate issues

And as for the framework being Preview 5, it is quite stable, the design is mostly there, and upgrading is not difficult. I started an app on Preview 1 and have upgraded within a few hours of the newest preview being available.

Answer 2

No, you shouldn't. Feel free to try it out on a new project, but a lot of people familiar with ASP.NET webforms aren't loving it yet, due to having to muck around with raw HTML + lots of different concepts + pretty slim pickings on documentation/tutorials.