Who is using MVC?

So MVC have been out now for a while, and I have seen a few things come by my way with it.  I just wanted to see who all was using it and how it was working out for you.

I am really curious about things like:

  • Did you have to modify your project plans to fit MVC or did it do exactly what you wanted?
  • Have you run into any problems using MVC?
  • Are the documentation that explains when you use MVC clear?
  • How useful have you found the ability to use unit testing with your MVC site?

Look forward to hearing from everyone.  Feel free to share other things as well.  I’d like to hear any success or failures you have had with it.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2008
    Our web site is using MVC http://www.epegasus.com.cn

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    Hi, i started to  build a commercial site , and i was just at the beginning , after i saw MVC, i  opened a new project and now i will build  the site with MVC in mind ...

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    Hi Currently I am not actually building anything with MVC but I am learning MVC by reading these blogs and watching videos. By working with Java technology it inspired me to learn ASP.NET MVC. I really like the idea behind MVC and it is not a new subject for me.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    There is a lot of hype around ASP.NET MVC but there does not seem to be a lot of real world results.  The lead architect at my company has been using a custom ASP.NET MVC framework for new projects.  So far in this framework, every project has run over on time and the clients are not happy with the functionality of the sites.   Our ASP.NET webforms framework seems to be quicker to develop in as well as have better functional results.  I am not against MVC, I would just like to see some success stories before I invest my time into it.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    I've build a couple demo sites for presentations based on ASP.NET MVC. Many of my thoughts are documented on my blog. Microsoft is doing an impressive job listening to the community and making this a product for everyone. I definitely commend you on those efforts. As for documentation, it seems pretty complete. I have difficulty finding information/presecription on when (and how) to write custom route constraints. All in all, you guys are doing some excellent work in this space! Keep it up!

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    @.NET Dev Guy: "...does not seem to be a lot of real world results" It's still in beta, so no, there aren't a lot of real world results. Be patient, they will come as the framework matures. "...webforms framework seems to be quicker to develop in" It's always quicker to develop in what you are familiar with, it's a matter of learning MVC as well as you know web forms when the benefits really come. Just my 2¢, completely unasked for :).

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    I'm waiting until it is officially released. Why jump into building a site when MVC stuff is changing all of the time?! When it is officially released, I plan on sitting down and learning it. Exciting!

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    Let's not forget that asp.net MVC isn't even in beta yet. In my opinion, it's much to early to use this in enterprise solutions. Personally, I'm not going to develop anything until at least beta-release. Until then, I will read the blogs and tutorials, so that I understand the basics when time is. Can't wait :-)

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    I have released 6 MVC websites. The only difficult part is when a new preview is released and things change.

  1. MVC was exactly what I wanted.
  2. Not too many problems other than when things change between previews (4 - 5)
  3. Yup
  4. Haven't used unit testing so far.
  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    We are using ASP.NET MVC on our upcoming startup valid.net. MVC provided everything we really could have hoped for. We were looking for a much more flexible and customizable solution for our web app than traditional forms web apps provide. We are using lots of ajax to build a very quick and clean interface. For me, the MVC framework has made the UI experience much better. Collaboration with the engineers and the web people has been better also. The documentation for MVC has been adequate. We have relied mainly on the blogs (scottgu, etc.) for getting started information. We definitely utilized the unit testing. I have enjoyed the ability to really test out the "backend" of the website before the web dev and design team gets to work. This way there are no surprises for them and we are building a more stable product early on. I am still kind of unsatisfied with the partial rendering. I feel like in the recent previews have been a bit of a step back from before. I was playing around with the ComponentControllers before and I liked the idea. The initial implementation was a bit cumbersome, but I think the idea had merit. The partials in the latest preview are lacking for what I envision partial views to be. I would like to see some way to have completely separate partial views set in the pages. I would like to see some sort of partial view that doesn’t depend on the full view or the controller for the model data. This way I could place these partials on various views of the site and have them be completely independent from the main controller and model.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    Hi, here is an example of a website I am building at this moment using MVC Framework: http://mytpi.naivn.biz (will be uploaded to www.mytpi.com soon) It's a pleasure to work with this technology, really. Had no any problems with it.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    Careful, you'll offend the alt.net whiners - they take a black and white viewpoint towards their technology/religion of choice.  You are either for or against it. I find it amusing how some of them talk about webforms like they've been completely unablet to get projects out the door these last few years. I'm with you though, I need to see some real world success before I make a business case to change what works.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    MVC is changing too much to invest real money in it. It IS worth learning from a conceptual stand point.   Once MVC becomes a REAL part of .Net (4.0 perhaps?) and not some (admittedly pleasant and fun to use) side-show, it'll get more interest and you'll see more real-world applications built using it.   For me specifically, since 99% of my work is done in SharePoint (MOSS, not WSS), I eagerly await Microsoft's adoption "IN HOUSE* of MVC so I can freely use it for things like custom applications that use the SharePoint Businesss Data Catalog (BDC) to perform two-way query/updates of data that is surfaced within SharePoint by BDC. As long as MVC is and "island" and not integrated within Microsoft's applications such as SharePoint, it will remain a pleasant curiosity (at least for me).

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    I've work with Jakarta Struts, the other MVC framework, and was not impressed. I don't like the idea of placing server side tags on the web page like classic ASP spaghetti code. The fact that it's more testable is not a good enough reason to go with MVC. I know there are other reasons, such as "Separation of Concerns", but ASP.NET is quicker to develop and have better functionality. You can also make a case that ASP.NET is more OO than MVC because each controls on the page is treated like an object with properties, methods, and events.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    I've always had problems using usual web forms, maybe one of them was the code produced which was ugly and very big, producing 20KB of code for a small page for example. It made designing much easier, more control on the produced markup, at least for me. The most significant problem was hosting problems, as IIS doesn't treat the virtual directory as a real application, which isn't MVC's problem, although it doesn't make a big problem. I haven't found any complete reference for MVC, forcing me to explore the features via team blogs, or reading the source code myself. That may be the reason it's not much popular. I've ported an existing webforms project to an MVC one for my university, and I'm very happy with the results at reg.shahedrobotic.ir (which is in my native language).

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    @.net dev guy sounds like an implementation problem rather than technology.. of course the webforms projects do better when you have a team of .net engineers that have multiple years of experience working with the framework vs. brand new mvc-in-.net with a few months of use behind it?

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    I am not a developer but i am learning and developing my own website. From asp.net 2.0 to asp.net 3.5 I was having a little difficulties deciding which method I should use for cross pages variables so I came across with MVC Preview 3, learned a bit of routing and viewdata concepts and now i have my site almost 90% translated to mvc style coding. Reading the unit testing I thought i will do my own way of testing with sample data than spending time learning how to do proper unit testing. I find it hard in MVC to have multiple submit buttons in the same form. For example you have submit form button and you also have upload picture button in same form, you want to save form when you hit 'upload picture' then post back to same page (I think mvc preview 5 may have addressed this already). The viewdata is good for passing data from controller to view page but passing the same data to another page or posting back to the same page requires a bit of coding to return the same data. I think if MVC team can improve passing data to multiple pages until you 'release' the data will help to simplify cross pages data. You can visit my MVC sites at http://www.adsandpages.com http://www.blogsandpages.com

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    I built this site using MVC. www.jobtree.com.au

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    Too slow in comparison to webforms. Perhaps this will change with dynamic data integration....?

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    I've looked into MVC, however I don't see where it solves any real issues we have with web design / web application design. At the end of every project, there are deliverables. Like .NEt Dev Guy said, I have yet to see any MVC project hit those deliverables. I think it's just Hype (sort of like LINQ), great with some of the smaller applications, but when you're working on an application with 80+ code projects in it, working with custom factories and reflection up the wazoo, it just doesn't fit the bill.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    About nine months ago I decided to finally make the switch from classic ASP to ASP.NET, but I could not get my mind around all the server-side stuff and postbacks.  Then I stumbled upon MVC, and hoped this was the answer. Now, nine months later, I have yet to do anything with MVC other than mess with the ready-to-run demos.  After reading countless blogs and watching innumerable videos, I still have not grasped it, or Dynamic Data for that matter. These environments are so esoteric and obscure that it must have been by design.  I wonder whether the the people 'responsible' for these offerings have ever encountered a real-world development requirement, in other words one that requires more than just Customer and Order tables. In the meantime, if I have done anything productive in the last nine months, it has been in good ol' classic ASP.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    We are planning to develop a larger web app using ASP.net MVC and creating an infrastructure framework for this.

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2008
    http://weblogs.asp.net/mikebosch/archive/2008/05/05/gallery-of-live-asp-net-mvc-sites.aspx

  • Anonymous
    September 09, 2008
    LoL at all the whingers. IMO, if you don't like ASP.NET MVC because of what it offers, then please stay away and frolik in your WebForms world of pain and problems. I especially love the comments about 'WebForms is quicker to program with'. So lol. Enjoy the support-and-maintenance problems. Back to the topic -> I'm re-learning how to rewrite our projects properly with MVC, IoC, Repos Pattern, etc ... and by the time i've tested each of these things out, the Beta or RTM will be out and i'll fnd time to port. All new projects will be MVC from now on -- no questions about it. Bring it on, I say .. and finally we'll all start to get closer to making better code that's more maintanable to change. lol @ those who just don't understand and complain about change.

  • Anonymous
    September 09, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 09, 2008
    Anyone who is pushing classic asp is CLEARLY in need of some serious schooling.  MVC is not a replacement for WebForms - just a different style.  WebForms are very Easy in concept.   I have several sites built with using them and that's great.   Have yet to learn MVC fully - been reading here and there and so far, it's different - but what I'm looking for is if it will make my web developer life easier... does it make sense to use it in a real world project other than it just being a newer piece of tech...  If not, back to webforms

  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2008
    I'm finding myself, still not stepping into looking at the framework, I'm scared that investing time in it, and having to keep up to date with changes in each preview release is going to cause me to pull out all my hair. I just wish it's more set in stone, and some resources online, are examples targetting older previews, with things which might have changed, I wish some of these older articles which aren't relevant to the current releases, cleaned up.

  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2008
    I'm skipping ASP.NET MVC because I just do not like working with HTML... Seems like a step down IMO. Perhaps MVC for WPF will be cleaner.

  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2008
    Astoria, Silverlight 1.0, SL 2.0, Entity Framework, Volta, Ajax, Popfly, IIS7, new Browsers and at least MVC a lot of stuff for a tiny developer. In fac 98% are lucky to solve daily problems in time without bugs. I would suggest Microsft to improve ASP.NET with more controls, better support for AJAX (and Toolkit) engange in Silverlight which is really the future. The sad thing is that great ASP.NET 2.0 have not been improved to ASP.NET 3.5. It is nearly the same. btw: have to post this with chrome cause of console Jscript errors with IE 8- thats daily business

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2008
    Let me know if the console error is gone now.  Hopefully it is fixed.

  • Anonymous
    September 26, 2008
    I am working on a commercial site using MVC.  I have never liked web forms, thought there was too much work being done by me to get simple things to work. I'm finding that the MVC framework, even in this early stage, is a lot easier to work with.

  • Anonymous
    September 27, 2008
    I have been working with the MVC pattern for a while now.  I do not think this pattern used with ASP.NET is the answer.  Webforms is much easier and quicker to program and actually get things done in ASP.NET.  Microsoft should be investing in webforms.

  • Anonymous
    October 13, 2008
    Commercial site using MVC is possible because commercial sites are always stepped down from the Intranet applications.  Commercial sites use more primitive technologies with a much slower pace of development because it has to cater to a much wide array of browsers and audience.   But for data centric LOB intranet applications, ASP.NET MVC is definitely an overkill.  It will increase budget for development and generate a whole lot more plumbing code the developers themselves have to maintain.  With webforms, you don't have to maintain the code for controls like gridview, datagrid, etc.  Both webform and MVC use divide and conquer to solve a complex development issue.  The difference is that with MVC you have to have a big team with average experience and talent to divide and conquer while with webform, you divide and conquer with a team of highly skilled experts (developers from Microsoft and other ISVs, much more experienced and talented than the average enterprise developers.  I would like to bet that your MVC projects will run at much higher cost than the Webform projects.  

  • Anonymous
    October 17, 2008
    Real developers want MVC and really like the new flexibility it provides over web forms.  Business users, or programmers with less "wide" ranging skills will continue to prefer web forms.  Anyway, I've got an open source blog engine on codeplex: http://codeplex.com/blogsvc or http://blogsvc.net

  • Anonymous
    October 20, 2008
    Probably real developers just want to play with all kinds of toys, don't care about the deadline when the project should be delivered.  Your profile of real developer is probably more or less as scripter, html and javascript or better php.  About "wide" ranging skills?  I don't think web form advocates are any less wider than the MVC lovers.  It's all about priority and productivity.  Asp.net MVC at this stage can only be called a toy compared with Web Form.

  • Anonymous
    January 06, 2009
    I have used MVC to build my Real Estate and property search engine http://www.baseestate.com.

  • Anonymous
    June 26, 2009
    This site uses MVC and Silverlight and we are very happy with the results

  • Anonymous
    September 29, 2009
    Been coding and maintaining WebForms for 7 years. ASP.NET was like a gruesome trainwreck if you have ever used any decent web tech like PHP or Ruby. I despised it and was convinced I would never be interested in it unless forced to. Started learning MVC a couple months back. Seriously, this is the greatest thing to come out of Microsoft since .NET itself. It's beautiful. Everything about it is so elegant and clean it makes web programming as much fun as Winforms. I am certain the people who wouldn't prefer it would be people posing as programmers so they can make a nice middle class income. Real programmers would absolutely love it and you will find with just a little patience it is easier to pick up than PHP or Ruby. For the whingers who complained you can't do anything complicated with it, you have to be kidding. I've got several submit buttons on the same form all using a simple text tag to do different things in the controller. If you want you can route things to functions with lambdas in the ASP code. I don't know half of it yet and it's a million times better than ASP.NET or ASP/VBScript ever was.