ASP.NET MVC versus the Zeitgeist

Question

ASP.NET MVC seems to be making a pretty big entrance. Can anyone summarise how its MVC implementation stacks up against popular MVC frameworks for other languages? (I'm thinking specifically of Rails and Zend Framework, though there are obviously lots.) Observations on learning curve, common terminology, ease of use and feelgood factor welcome.

(For the sake of a little background, I've been avoiding using ASP.NET for some time because I really hate the webforms approach, but Jeff's prolific praise on the podcast has almost convinced me to give it a go.)

Answer 1

If you're already programming in the .NET idiom, it's pretty easy to pick up on a lot of what's going on in the MVC Framework. Rails, on the other hand, can be pretty easy to pick up (granted, at a basic level) if you've never set eyes on Ruby before you start.

It seems like you're talking about quality-as-MVC, though, and it looks to me like both frameworks (can't speak for Zend) do a very good job of separating the concerns.

Answer 2

I'm just getting into ASP.NET MVC, so these are some early thoughts comparing it to Rails:

Mostly manages to stick with static typing, at the expense of a little extra code.
This will either give you the warm fuzzies or make you feel slightly shackled depending on how you feel about dynamic typing. For instance, you can have your views expect particular typed data (and so get compile-time checking of your views).

Better separation of bits of the framework.
So there's no prescribed data access mechanism such as ActiveRecord in Rails; you're free to choose your own. LINQ feels similar if you want something cheap, if a bit more verbose. You can use the non-WebForms parts of ASP.NET like caching and authentication.

Still playing feature catch-up.
Preview 5 brought AcceptVerbs, model updaters (similar to Ruby's hash.merge) and more ways to bind forms to models. Feels like there's still more to come before they check off most of the feature set that Rails has.

I'm still missing a little of Rails' freedom and elegance (much of which is down to Ruby, I guess), but ASP.NET MVC really does feel quite close.