Is it worth migrating an existing asp.net-mvc project with webform view engine to razor?

Question

I have a large asp.net-mvc web site . I recently upgraded to MVC 4 but one thing i am debating is it worth it to migrate to razor engine. I see there are tools to "auto" upgrade but i am trying to figure out if its worth the migration pain. I have about 100 total view (both regular and partial). If its a code base that i will have to live with for a while, is it worth the effort?

I know this may seem a bit subjective but given the size of my project I was looking for the expected cost of this migration effort versus the expected benefits.

Answer 1

Unless you have a specific reason, then IMHO no. Razor is a little, tiny bit (~5% according to most sources) slower than WebForms views however this may be old information. At best, they will render exactly the same speed. I have seen nothing to suggest razor is faster at rendering than webforms(ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor performance) and offers absolutely nothing additional that you cannot do with the WebForms markup.

Basically, its a more succinct markup language and can be a quicker to write and looks better than WebForms syntax. Lastly, if you organization has a legacy of writing WebForms code from back in the day, then all of the developers are already familiar with the WebForms syntax. No learning curve.

So - should you rewrite an entire application? No - you gain nothing. Going forward, should you use Razor? Depends, most 'seem' to be moving that way, it does look nicer and keeps the views a little cleaner.

If, however, you do decide to begin to update your views to razor, remember you can do this in steps. The ViewEngine will look for both types of views when determining what view to render. This does not have to be done in one fell swoop, but could be done gradually over time.

PS - This will probably be closed as a subjective question soon.