>Watching MVC videos on LearnDevNow what I come away with is that now MS style web development will take another step down by making developers hand code straight HTML rather than using asp.net controls for complex web pages.
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>On top of that they are using JQuery, which is apparently open source (meaning nobody is responsible for quality - like AJAX), for designing events/methods rather than VB/C# based page events. Great.
>
>Sounds great if you are billing the client by the hour and you can convince them that it really should take longer to develop a web app now than a couple of years ago.
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>Did I miss something (if so - please show me the base code for a gridview MVC style where all I do is define the columns and the datasource)?
>
>I'm going to have to fight through enough of this to pass the exam one way or another, but I just see it as a further annoyance seeing MS make more ways to make development more difficult.


I just worked on an MVC site for the first time (after doing only standard ASP.NET stuff) so I can tell you at least some of the things I like and dislike about it.

Things I like about MVC (over standard ASP.NET)

- Data binding is a LOT better - bi-directional binding is built-in.
- Data validation via attributes is really nice - attach a few attributes and it automatically injects JS validation (and server side validation) for you
- Working directly with JSON/AJAX-style callbacks is a bit easier
- Much simpler pipeline which makes it easier to understand what is happening

Stuff I like about classic ASP.NET better:

- Being able to easily build reusable components
- For a lot of basic stuff having the eventing model makes it easier/faster to write code against (although this is one of the things that gets more complex as you write more complex app).
- A better selection of third party controls

MVC has a number of "Helper" classes which can generate your basic HTML controls for you (and handle binding, validation, etc.) but the third party controls available for ASP.NET are easier to use. For grid controls I think it's kind of assumed (beyond a basic grid) that you'll use some sort of client-side grid, like jqGrid. It's nice (and it's free) but it would be painful to use if you're not comfortable with Javascript. It would also work better with MVC because it's easier to return JSON results from an MVC page.

BTW - jQuery rocks.