ASP.NET MVC excites me more than just about anything Microsoft has released in the past 5 years (well... I do like Silverlight). As I am new to MVC development, I am very familiar with classic forms of Microsoft web development (classic ASP, and ASP.NET).
A bit of history is in order here
Back in the nineteen hundred and nineties Microsoft released ASP. At the time it was a very procedural VB scripting language. You didn't have objects really (COM was available, but not really the same thing) and debugging was a nightmare. Anyone other than me remember writing "Response.Write...." 9863454 times trying to figure out where a logic error was?
A little after ASP 3.0 was released Microsoft released ASP.Net 1.0. All of a sudden all the VB script programmers were in a rough spot. ASP.Net was a totally new concept in web development. Not only did you have to learn a new language (VB or C#) but you also lost a lot of control over what was actually rendered to the browser.
So now there is yet another new and very different way of development?
That's right folks! It's time to role up those sleeves again and dive in. Only this time Microsoft didn't make any language changes so the learning curve is a bit smaller. When I first looked at MVC I was a bit skeptical (because who wants to relearn everything they thought they knew about web development....again). As I was reading about MVC it was like turning over flat rocks in a field hoping there wasn't a snake underneath. Slowly over time I realized that Microsoft had done something so wonderful that instead of being afraid of what I would find I was destroying all the information I could find on the subject! I was back in control of exactly what was to be rendered on a page and not only that, I was able to take advantage of object oriented design patterns too. To top it all off MVC allows for better debugging and Unit Testing of my code.
FINALLY! The developer is back in control!
-M
