Do you think ASP.NET MVC skills will be in higher demand in the future?

Question

There seem to be factors for and against this happening.

For:

• Growing number of applications being implemented on a web platform
• Growing need for web apps that work on different devices/platforms, and thus, a need for clean, compliant XHTML code on the front-end

Against:

• Plugins such as Silverlight and Flash becoming more popular, available on mobile devices, and featuring excellent frameworks for rich internet application development, and replacing HTML/CSS/Javascript

Do you know of any other factors to consider?

Answer 1

I do believe it will have its place for two main reasons:

1. It's tailored for TDD development.
2. The wire is relatively clean with the removal of Viewstate.

However, it'll be very interesting to see how things progress with the advent of .NET v4.0 which will allow control-level switching of Viewstate vs. Page level.

Answer 2

Well, Google does not think JS and HTML will go away. On the contrary. This is why they invested in their V8 engine. What will be is that technologies like SVG will be implemented into the browser and you will access their API using Javascript.

But, In my culture they say "prophecy was given to the stupids"...

Answer 3

I cannot predict the future, but one thing I know is that someone with motivation and skills will be able to learn the good thing when the times come. We often hire people with little specific knowledge of what they will do with us and we train them. Anyway most company needs people to work on their own technology, something you cannot learn other than by working there.

Otherwise I'm already seeing less and less stuff in ASP.net (it can be because my interest have shifter though) Nothing last forewer anyway, the future is already been written somewhere!

Answer 4

God I hope so.

Answer 5

I think so.

Out of my relatively small developer pool when the conversation comes up MVC or WebForms the answer is always MVC.

This is especially the case because grid/drag and drop/RAD tools are starting to pop out for MVC. Now that MVC is also open source I expect to see custom implementations to start rolling out as well.

IMO the question to ask in another year or so is "are my web form skills still in demand?"

Answer 6

Well, the future is a hard thing to predict... How long in the future are you talking about?

Right now ASP.Net webforms is the popular platform and MVC has just been introduced. There is only a vey small cult following and a very large amount of hype. In technology the intriguing thing is that you can't afford to reject any new development and it is best to get abroad a new technology when it's still fresh so that you can be at the top when it's a rage.

So considering that a lot of people here think MVC is hot, I believe it is a good idea to take some time out of your schedule and invest it into MVC. That's what I am doing.

Answer 7

Sure it will! After three years of coding for my manager, he just said let's make it MVC, Leszek! and I'm sure that he knows nothing about that.

Answer 8

Absolutely, although perhaps not as quickly as I hope. The real reason that ASP.NET will be phased out in favor of MVC is that MVC really bakes testing into the product in ways that ASP.NET just can't. Regression and unit testing is with ASP.NET is cumbersome at best and generally not done anywhere near as thoroughly as it should be. The architecture makes it difficult and concerns are spread out all over in ASP.NET (some logic on the page, the code behind, in dlls and stored procs) whereas MVC allows for a greater separation of concerns. That separation allows for much better code coverage. Better testing = fewer bugs.

However, if you're wondering what is hot, type in a technology term in Dice & count up the hits for where you're hoping to work.