How long before ASP.NET MVC becomes widely used in industry?

Question

I am trying to decide whether to learn ASP.NET MVC (or to spend the time learning another technology that interests me). I know that it is an elegant framework, but I am trying to assess my future job opportunities if I invest in this skill. In your estimation, how long is it going to be before demand for ASP.NET MVC developers rivals that for developers in the other top web dev frameworks? Is it a matter of a year? 2 years? 3+? On a related note, do you see use of ASP.NET MVC surpassing classic ASP.NET in the foreseeable future? Scott Guthrie says the two will exist side by side, but I'm curious just how much of the mind share ASP.NET MVC is expected to grab.

I know this is a speculative question; I'm just interested in your subjective hunches.

Answer 1

I know for a fact that some companies, including my own, is adapting to asp.net mvc and using it for almost all projects.

Even though it's a Beta, i still see it widely used. This is probably because ASP.NET is such a strong web-language, companies more and more adapt to the better and more evolved technologies such as .net.

Answer 2

In our company, it is becoming the de facto standard for new projects, and we're currently in the middle of porting our main website from ColdFusion Mach-II to ASP.NET MVC, as both are MVC environments, and I see MVC as a superior architectural pattern to web forms and the code-behind model.

Given that Microsoft has put a lot of time and effort into this, I don't think that it's going to fade away by any means, especially when you've got exciting things such as IronRuby.

Answer 3

For mainstream adoption, I wouldn't expect it will really take off until after RTM. Initially work will be limited to new projects, which I suspect there may be fewer of with the economy being as it is. The real increase in jobs will come when there are more established projects requiring maintenance.

As for surpassing the original ASP.NET, that will happen when more older projects are decommissioned, either in one hit, or by sections being replaced by new MVC functionality.

Personally, I would learn at least the basics now, so as to be ready for an increase after RTM.

Answer 4

I think both options will be around for a long time.

The current trend seems to be towards RESTful applications etc and I expect MVC to gain in popularlity. However some projects are more suited for the existing webforms style whilst others will greatly benefit from MVC.

MVC is great and to learn the basics is not going to take long. Go through the tutorials on Scott Guthries blog (although some of the early stuff is out of date and syntax has changes)

MVC does have some disadvantages:

MVC does not use viewstate. This has positive (smaller pages, faster, cleaner model) and negative points. Although not impossible it is trickier to develop items such as controls that need to maintain state e.g. a paging datagrid etc

Many companies already have an investment in existing webforms technologies

Answer 5

i also know some regular companies that are already developing in it, and some that are considering using it. I think it's already at a stage where a regular asp.net programmer would be wise to tinker with it.

Answer 6

"but I am trying to assess my future job opportunities if I invest in this skill"

If you want to increase your future job opportunities then what you rather should ask yourself is; "What is the hysterically coolest and funnyest thing I could possibly work on today?"

Because if you think of "what will make you valuable" you will always end up being mediocre. If you however do what's FUN to do you will end up creating competency few others have the capacity to outperform - which always seems to be valuable in the world... ;)

Not to mention that your professional life will be so much better!

Do what's FUN and what you get the most "kicks" out of, then your "value" will increase!

Answer 7

We're using it for our next project. It doesn't need to be RTM before you release a project with it. It just needs to pass QA.