Is ASP.NET MVC a good platform?

I aim to try use DevExpress web server controls (which are awesome) in an ASP.NET MVC project (some articles I read on 'net seems to indicat开发者_开发百科e the two can work well together).

I'm eager to start a new project using ASP.NET MVC, and I have been reading up a lot on ASP.NET MVC lately, but I'm not sure if I should invest a project in it. My concern is that it may turn out to be like LINQ to SQL, which is essentially been killed off since MS will not be providing updates.

Is ASP.NET MVC a viable solution to invest in my case?

Yes definitely ASP.NET MVC or any other MVC framework is worth learning. MVC pattern is all about seperation of concerns and helps you to keep your code clean.

If you like Devexpress control too much you could be disappointed because there is no server side control in ASP.NET MVC. But if you want to learn Web's underlying mechanism,HTML, Javascript , clean code, TDD ASP.NET MVC is a good way to go.

Learn first, experiment later

Asp.net MVC is a great development platform for building web applications, so it's definitely worth your time to learn it through and through.

But I suggest you first learn MVC framework and build at least one semi complex app with it and then start experimenting with mixing MVC with web forms controls. It is possible but as much you think you will gain you'll probably loose more. So I would be a bit reluctant and advise you not to match these. At least not on a Greenfield project.

In other words: presumably knowing Asp.net web forms would you suggest someone to heavy use dynamicly created user controls in their web pages if they're just about to learn the technology of Asp.net web forms? Probably not. Or mixing web forms with ASP pages on a greenfield project...

Instead try finding great either MVC-friendly server extensions or client-side libraries that will help you create rich web apps like ExtJS (I don't work for ExtJS llc, but I used the lib on a project in the past and liked it a lot). Using something like this you won't loose stuff from MVC and gain great user experience and rich functionality.

Seeing how you're asking the question on this site, I'd say YES!

DevExpress has a bunch of MVC specialized controls, that use Ajax to get data from the server via callbacks. You can see demos of the controls here: http://mvc.devexpress.com. I am not sure if you can use the web forms controls, my understanding is that you can't.

Also, regarding LinqToSql, you don't have to use that. I am using NHibernate for the data layer and it works very nice with MVC.

I worked with asp.net and web forms for more than 5 years and at least 1 year with the DevExpress controls for asp.net, but now I love MVC so much that I think I don't want to go back to the web forms anytime soon.

Hope this helped.