Code For Web

Shifting from development process to another takes a little bit of time. Currently most of the projects we start are ASP.NET(C#) projects. Why, that is what we know, and can product high quality code with. The shift, to Ruby On Rails. Why, agile practices, development time, and many other small nice additions and features we have come to love.

Yes, with ASP.NET you can practice agile processes, but the ASP.NET MVC Framework is not 100% yet, but it is solid. With ASP.NET you have the joy of compiled code, “speed”, faster loading and so on…

But, with open source being a nice shiny rock to look at we decide it was time to give it a test run. I evaulated RoR, Django and CakePHP. CakePHP, lost instantly because I am done with PHP in general, so it did not have much to stand on. Django, very interesting framework, and some great features like “auto-admin” pages. The Python language is fun to work with and the overall power of the framework is very impressive. RoR, this being the most mature of the three and the most community focused, I felt that this for now would be the framework/development path of choice.

Currently we are various development stages with a few projects, 1 project is ASP.NET MVC, 1 is RoR and the last one is ASP.NET WebForms.

Out of these three, the one that I dread the most to work with is the ASP.NET WebForms. The development style feels old, clunky and just slow. The code-behind-method and the lack of any real separation of concerns is a major downfall to this development process.

ASP.NET MVC is a breath of fresh air, but late to the scene. In typical MS fashion they tend to copy, and no longer be a leader in the field. The team developing the ASP.NET MVC Framework has done an amazing job, and the framework is great to work with. It still has a long way to go, but the overall status of the framework now is very promising. Only issue, many .NET developers will sit on the fence and either stick with WebForms or move onto MVC. There will be a divide in this development space.

RoR is really comminity driven. One thing that is somewhat good about the framework is that they is only one way to do things. Configuration is only in one spot, the Ruby language is refreshing to work with and easy to pick up. Overall the experience has been pleasent. Only issue was deployment, since there is a little more involved in this step. But after working out a few issues, things are flying!

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So, not really sure how many people have heard about the new Beta framework from Microsoft from the ASP.NET team called ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller). But, if you haven’t, check it out! The framework follows the convention of separation of concerns and is excellent for building web applications. I find it to be a huge improvement over ASP.NET WebForms.

At first glance a development might be a little scared of the project layout, but after working with it for a few hours, things just start to click. You start to see how the controller handles all of the request and passes the data off to either the DAL (Data Access Layer) or the View (HTML). This starts to become simple, and you may find yourself enjoying web development again. The View is simple and is only used to display the information. Some have stated that we are returning to the time of “spaghetti code”, but its the View, deal with it, and learn to write “helpers” (we’ll cover that later).

But truthfully, ASP.NET MVC is defiantly something to check out, and if you are a web developer you should install the beta give it a spin and see what it has to offer. Plus, if you are a purist and believe in standardized HTML, then make the move and start developing in MVC today. Your Views (HTML) will be cleaner, no View State or a messy post-back process to deal with.

Here are a few resources to get you started:

Rob Conery
He has an excellent series on creating an ecommerce project in the ASP.NET MVC complete with screen cast.

Phil Haack

Phil works at Microsoft and is one of the engineers on the ASP.NET MVC team, he always has some future insight to what is coming up next for the framework.

Well that’s it for now, but hopefully this opens some developer’s eyes to the greatness of MVC and the community starts to grow.

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