ASP.NET MVC Should I bother learning webforms first? [closed]

Question

I'm about to foray into ASP.NET Web Development and I already know some of the very basics using Visual Web Developer and some of the implementations of Web Forms. However, instead of continuing to go down the Web Forms path and mastering VIEWSTATE and all of the ugliness that comes along with it, I've decided to go the MVC route.

At this point, I'm wondering, should I continue to learn Web Forms and then move over to MVC? Or can MVC be learned independently without knowing a thing about Web Forms? What's my best course of action?

Answer 1

No, don't even look at Web Forms.

MVC is modeled much closer to how HTTP actually works, which makes it much easier to work with and to build today's web applications with client side scripts. Combining Web Forms and javascript is really a pain.

MVC is also much better in that it helps getting the server side structure right. It is possible to use a model-view-presenter (or controller) separation on Web Forms too, but it has to be ducked taped on top of Web Forms.

Finally, you will have nearly no use of any WebForms knowledge when starting with MVC. It's rather the other way around, the WebForms developers I've taught MVC have to be de-brain-washed from WebForms first ;-)

Answer 2

While much of the excitement in the .NET community is around MVC, many of the applications out there continue to be in webforms. If for no other reason, you should continue to learn webforms so that you can convert applications over to MVC.

I've been working on MVC since the 1.0 RC, but no matter where I have gone in my consulting work, if there is .NET you almost invariably will see webforms. In fact I would dare say in the enterprise the majority of applications are still in webforms.

In my view MVC is a much better platform, and webforms will probably not be supported eventually (although Microsoft continues to say it will). Still how many of us said that VB6 will go away and got burned when we find an ancient bug and have to spend days just figuring out how things work?

We're still years away from having webforms be phased out completely, and you don't want to restrict what you can and can't do because you decided MVC is the only way (your company may not want to spend the money on converting their mega-spectacular webforms app because you don't like webforms).

More knowledge never hurts, but ignorance can burn you.