New to ASP.NET: Webforms vs MVC2

Question

I am new to ASP.NET Development and can't decide between developing with Webforms or MVC 2. Nevermind the pros and cons of each. I've seen mixed opinions of each. But which method would be the best for someone who has no prior experience in ASP.NET or C#?

If your answer is: learn both, then which should I learn first? MVC 2 or Webforms?

Answer 1

I was in a similar situation to you a year ago. I'm a Computer Science student, well finished my course around a month ago. First two years of my course I worked with Java, PHP, Oracle, MySQL. This actually landed me an industrial placement at Oracle where I used their ADF which was Java based.

Anyway all of this made me start thinking about what I wanted to use for my final year project and with no experience of Microsoft technologies began to venture down that path. I wasn't aware of ASP.NET MVC and spent time learning ASP.NET WebForms. I liked the easy style of development, drag and drop is a very quick way of developing small sites. However I also disliked the lack of control I had and the simplicity, I didn't feel overly challenged.

During my final year I started to research Model View Controller and how it suits web applications. From this I came across ASP.NET MVC and in my opinion its far better than ASP.NET WebForms. There seems to be an emerging trend in MVC frameworks for web applications and this seems to be the hot technology to build web applications in.

Now finished I can say that teaching myself ASP.NET MVC was one of the best things I did. I don't know if you're British based, but only two Universities in Britain teach .NET. This made getting a graduate job much easier and I stood out from .NET candidates because I was from a Java course, the same as yourself.

The transition from Java to .NET is not particularly difficult all the theory and concepts are the same. Also ASP.NET MVC is becoming quite popular among businesses which specialise in the Microsoft technology stack. As it is quite a new technology learning now whilst young will be an advantage. I've ended up in a job where the company are rewritting their application from ASP.NET WebForms to MVC and only myself and the senior developer have ever used MVC leading to quite a large role in the project.

If you're interested my final year research can be found here and I have a chapter on ASP.NET WebForms and MVC

My source code is also on my site but its mainly MVC 1.0 not 2.0

Answer 2

Tough question.

What's your background in web development? Are you familiar with the MVC pattern?

Are you learning it for a job?

ASP.NET Web Forms are easier for beginners, as it hides much of the underlying implementation details of the ASP.NET engine.

ASP.NET MVC requires a deeper understanding of concepts such as routing and HTTP methods.

But yes - you should learn both.

As MVC is a new platform for developing ASP.NET Web Applications, i would learn Web Forms first. That way you will appreciate the benefits of MVC more when you contrast it to Web Forms.