Over the last few months, I've been seeing a lot more about web application frameworks using the MVC pattern, as well as rumors about Microsoft working on some sort of framework to support MVC in ASP.NET. There are already a bunch of 3rd party tools that people are using, particularly MonoRail. My gut is this is partly a pattern that people who like clean separation of layers and TDD can get behind, which traditionally has been difficult in traditional ASP.NET coding patterns. And partly a response to Ruby, something which I confess I have not had time to learn much about.
All this is particularly interesting to me since I've been working on the ASP and ASP.NET stack for quite a long time now and there are certain things that have always been difficult, such as automated testing and breaking up applications into smaller chunks that can be deployed and tested independently. And then there's always the presentation vs the business layer vs the database layer stuff that continue to need refining. And provide something for architects to fight about.
I have to say this pattern represents a pretty big shift in thinking for an old school web app guy like me, but I am starting to see some of the positive aspects of it as I look into it. It doesn't feel right for every web app, although that might change once I build up some skills using an MVC pattern.
Anyway, apparently Microsoft was a bit further along than I thought, as early demos popped up at the ALT.NET conference from a week or so ago. If you don't have time to watch the video stylings of Scott Hanselman of ScottGu's lecture, ScottGu has also posted a really good overview on his blog earlier this week. I think it's something we'll be hearing a lot more about and I'm curious to learn more about how to best leverage this approach.