Prerequisite knowledge for ASP.NET MVC

Question

After being frustrated in my attempts to learn the arcana that is ASP.NET, I decided to try ASP.NET MVC.

I have extensive experience with C# 2.0 doing just about everything (WinForms, Windows Services, remoting, ...) except ASP.NET . I've been writing PHP for even longer than I've been coding .NET. With all of this experience, I thought I was ready for ASP.NET MVC. I now see I'm learning the following simultaneously and having a bit of a hard time with it:

• the MVC pattern in general
• ASP.NET
• ASP.NET MVC
• .NET 3.5.

I'm currently about 1/2 way through the NerdDinner free book chapter. I don't feel completely lost but I do get the feeling that I'm not catching on to as much as I'd like to (due to the fact that I'm learning 4 things at once -- sometimes it's not clear which skills are from which abstraction layer).

What prerequisite knowledge would you recommend for ASP.NET MVC? Any/all of those I listed above? Others? Or maybe I'm just slow and most people would be fine doing what I did.

Answer 1

I have been an ASP.Net developer for just 3 years now. I got a project from a friend and decided to develop it using ASP.Net MVC to learn this new stuff. I must admit I felt lost in the beginning as well, but then I saw some very interesting articles on the ASP.Net/MVC site. At the bottom are 7 iterations which will give you a very detailed of what you are doing while you are doing it.

I used the Products example they have there and applied sortof the same to my own project. After all the iterations, I now feel like I have a very good base to start learning the more advanced MVC implementations. (JQuery plugins/Ajax/...)

http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc/

I think some basic understanding of ASP.Net is a base requirement. If you have that, you should be able to get through this with just a little bit of motivation.

Answer 2

"MVC pattern in general" - no need but useful. ASP.NET - also not necessary.

.NET 3.5 - yes. It will be your working tool, you should master it.

Very useful would be the understanding of multi-tier architecture since this time you will have to think first about how you organize your application, opposite to direct hacking with controls in WebForms.

Also you will not avoid knowledge of HTML/CSS, maybe JavaScript.

Just don't be scared. Do it one step at a time and you will get it. Just don't read too much. Practice it.

Lots of highly useful tutorials are to be found here: ASP.NET MVC Tutorials

Also read blogs from ASP.NET MVC "parents":

http://haacked.com

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/default.aspx

http://www.hanselman.com/

http://stephenwalther.com/blog/Default.aspx