Web Development Books

Programming Microsoft ASP.NET MVC (2e)

Reviewed by: Alex Armstrong

ASP.NET MVC is the new way to create websites using Microsoft technology. The original ASP.NET, now called Web Forms to distinguish if from MVC, was a major technology that from the day it was introduced had important flaws. However, if you were a Microsoft web programmer you spent time learning about its principles and later about ways around its limitations. Overall it was a good scheme that allowed the programmer to use many of the approaches that worked well for desktop apps.

One of the vigorous proponents of ASP.NET web forms was the author of this book and he too has had to work hard to convert to the new religion. To quote from the introduction:

"From what I can see, most people using Web forms are maintaining applications written for ASP.NET 2.0 and topped with some Ajax extensions. Web Forms will continue to exist for legacy projects. I'm not really sure that for new projects the small changes we had in ASP.NET 4.0 and those slated for ASP.NET 5.0 will really make a difference. The real big change is switching to ASP.NET MVC. Again that's just a natural follow up for ASP.NET developers."