At my first programming job, I remember sending an application to a customer via FTP. In order to make the process easier, I downloaded a feature-rich FTP client and started uploading files. I remember my boss, Cliff, came into my office and took one look at my monitor and said "You kids and your fancy GUIs". This was Cliff's way of saying that I really did not need to download a fancy program in order to upload a single file.

On a similar note, when it comes to ASP.NET I often feel that Webforms masks developers from the real truth about real web development. If Cliff was here, he would probably say something like "You Kids and Your Fancy Webforms!".

I remember the classic ASP days when I would develop custom scripts to create a data grid. I spent hours adding features like sorting and paging. There was quite a bit of code involved and I took the painstaking steps to try to reduce the amount of roundtrips to the server and to optimize the HTML that was generated. Nowadays, with Webforms you can drop a DataGridView control onto a form, enter a select statement and you are done. I really like the way that Rob Conery describes Webform development on his blog:

WebForms is a lie. It's abstraction wrapped in deception covered in lie sauce presented on a plate full of diversion and sleight of hand. Nothing you do with Webforms has anything to do with the web - you let it do the work for you.

Now don't get me wrong here. I really appreciate tools that allow me to focus on the business logic rather than all the non-value added issues. However, my fear is that we are going to end up with a generation of developers who do not understand basic things like binary code or hex. With tools like Visual Studio we are developing at such a high level that we lose sight of the fact of how things really work under the covers.

One of the things that I really like about ASP.NET MVC is that we have gotten away from the PostBack and "Magic State" paradigm. There is a clear line between what causes a post back and what does not. Furthermore, If you want to maintain state for a page then you explicitly need to do it in your code. For these reasons, I feel like MVC has once again given me back full control over my HTML.

Let me end this post by stating that these are only my opinions. I am not saying that Webforms is better than MVC or vice-versa. After all, there is nothing stopping you from adding a Webform to a MVC project. In some cases it may be required (such as adding a SSRS Report Viewer to a web application which requires Postback). I guess when it comes to coding I am a control freak. There are times when it is nice for a tool to do the work for you as long as you have a true understanding of what really is happening behind the scenes.