Is the Nerddiner walk-through suitable for ASP.NET MVC 2?

Question

I'm keen to teach myself ASP.NET MVC 2 (coming from a heavy embedded or rich GUI background). If have found the nerddiner walk-through but it is still for ASP.NET MVC 1. The codeplex downloads have been updated to MVC 2 but the link for the PDF goes back to the MVC 1 book.

• Is it even possible to follow the walk-through in MVC 2?
• If so, what technologies does it skip? (e.g. LinqToSql instead of EF?)
• Is there an updated PDF (other than getting the whole Professional ASP.NET MVC 2 book)?

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EDIT - the answer seems to be universally that the v1 tutorial is good enough for learning v2. As it happened, I downloaded the sample chapter of the new book from Amazon onto my Kindle DX and found that the tutorial has been updated to EF. Because I don't personally like learning something (e.g. LinqToSql) that has been superseded - I've clicked "Buy" - Damn you Amazon for making it so easy to spend my money :-)

Answer 1

There's no updated PDF version but the MVC 2 version of the book is coming out this might be updated.....

However if you go through the nerd dinner walk through 99.9% of what you read applies to MVC 2. MVC 2 just adds more functionality that won't be covered but there's plenty of blogs around that cover MVC 2 functionality - check out Scott Guthrie or Phil Haack for details.

As far as technologies skipped the nerd dinner PDF uses LinqToSql whereas the MVC 2 sample uses Entity Framework. Both are valid forms of data access and are similar so if you start on LinqToSql you probably will pick up Entity Framework easily.

Answer 2

I did exactly what you want to do and it worked fine. Nerd Dinner is a great place to start if you are trying to learn MVC. All of the fundamentals are there and you won't miss too much. What you will find after finishing Nerd Dinner is that is will give you a great understanding of MVC but you will want to go to the next level and learn more. So even though Nerd Dinner is not MVC 2, it is one of the best tutorials I found to learn the basics of MVC in general.

So to answer your questions: Yes, you definitely can go through Nerd Dinner with MVC 2

I wouldn't worry too much about what is missing if you are just learning, just go through it and things will become clear and you will have many more questions after that

I don't know if there is an updated version of the pdf but I would rather doubt it. I think Nerd Dinner was designed as a starting point to learn MVC.