CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netasp.net-mvcwebforms
danarj
danarj

Reputation: 1838

Is asp.net webforms good enough for web development

I am beginner in asp.net and I found myself between two type of project (Webforms and MVC) and I begun with Webforms and I do quite good with it and my question: Is Webforms will be enough for powerful web development (I know how to use CSS-Javascript-Jquery).

Upvotes: 0

Views: 261

Answers (2)

Tim M.
Tim M.

Reputation: 54377

You are asking the wrong question. As @MikeBrind points out, web forms have been used for over a decade to power sites handling massive traffic. Instead, you should be asking yourself which technology is the best fit for the type of projects you work on, and which technology's strengths are most important to you.

Also keep in mind that ASP.Net MVC and Web Forms share a great deal of underlying architecture.

My (biased) opinion: you can write great applications with web forms but to do so you must master the framework and throw away many built-in capabilities. Most web forms applications I have seen are poorly written.

This is partly because web forms provides many features aimed at abstracting the developer from the HTTP model. This can speed development, but the abstraction often comes at the expense of bloat and developer ignorance.

But well-written web forms apps don't need to be replaced because they are somehow "bad".

That said, Microsoft is putting a great deal of effort behind MVC, and--while the MVC pattern has long existed--the ASP.Net MVC web framework is built around concepts that simply weren't widely known/popular when Web Forms was developed.

Specifically, web forms is weak regarding:

  • REST (introduced in a dissertation in 2000; but SOAP web-services and stateful RPC was much more popular at the time)
  • unobtrusive JavaScript
  • asynchronous JavaScript
  • Clean routing and "hackable" URLs
  • Test-driven development (hard to break web forms components into testable parts)
  • Precise control over markup generated

Upvotes: 3

Mike Brind
Mike Brind

Reputation: 30075

From 2002 until 2008, Web Forms was the only way to develop ASP.NET sites and plenty of large enterprise sites have been written using the Web Forms framework. So yes - it is enough for "good web development".

Upvotes: 4

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