Make the Move to MVC at DevConnections, Oct 31-Nov 3 in Las Vegas

I will be presenting three sessions at Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, one of the conferences that is part of DevConnections. Two of my talks are especially targeted at ASP.NET Web Forms developers who are in the process of learning or coming up to speed with ASP.NET MVC.

On Wednesday, November 2nd at 11:30 AM I will be delivering ASP.NET MVC 3 in 75 Minutes. This talk is especially suited for MVC neophytes. Check out the abstract...

Trying to come up to ASP.NET MVC in a hurry? The session will begin with a brief introduction to ASP.NET MVC 3. During the remainder of the session, Paul will present a series of step-by-step demos, building a data-driven ASP.NET application utilizing the Razor View Engine, LINQ, and the Entity Framework. The demos will cover creation of a data model with Entity Framework 4.1, the population of select controls, the incorporation of input validation, unobtrusive JavaScript, jQuery, remote validation, and more.

Then at 3:45 PM that same day I will be delivering another interesting session entitled Lightning Development with MVC Scaffolding. Here's the session abstract....

Steve Sanderson and Microsoft have created an amazing Nuget package called MVC Scaffolding. This package with a very unasuming name is packed with features to help you develop ASP.NET MVC applications rapidly. This session will get you started using MVC Scaffolding with a series of demos that illustrate the scaffolding controllers, views, data models, tests, and lots more. During this session, you’ll learn how to scaffold various parts of your MVC apps, change scaffolding defaults, and even modify the scaffolding templates used by MVC Scaffolding.

During this talk I will show you how to use MVC Scaffolding for both CodeFirst and DatabaseFirst development. If you are interested in the latter, see my blog post on this topic.

Not ready to make the jump to ASP.NET MVC? I will also be presenting a Web Forms talk as well: What's So Funny About Peach, Love, and Server Controls? It's a light-hearted title, but the topic is nonetheless very important. I'll be giving this talk on Thursday, November 3 at 9:30 AM. Here's the abstract...

Server controls are both the good news and bad news for Web Forms developers. They can be quite good because their rich event model makes things so easy. But they can also be very bad once you start pushing their inconsistent programming model. In this session, Paul will explore in depth the "out-of-the-box" data-bound server control event model, make sense of the programming model, and show you how to maximize your use of the data controls while minimizing your pain.

Of course these are just my talks. There are lots of other talks on MVC and Web Forms at varying levels. Plus lots of talks on WPF, Silverlight, SQL Server, Windows Phone 7, HTML 5, Exchange, and Windows.

Hope to see you there!

Microsoft ASP.NET Connections

9 Comments

  • Thats very interesting .What makes webforms bad ? is that viewstate or the html it generates . If so can't microsoft fix them ?

  • @MisterFantastic: WebForms are still a good option but some people prefer MVC, especially for its better separation of concerns, and testability.

  • MVC does provide better seperation and testability, but what about the thousands of .net controls that cannot be used?
    and would MVC take longer to develop compared to traditional we forms?

  • @Chris Yes, you point out issues one has to grapple with and weigh against the good. And it requires a whole new mindset. Still, many, including myself see a lot of advantages in using MVC for at least some ASP.NET web apps.

  • Thanks Paul,
    I am getting into MVC3 more now with the linkin to Jquery a lot of my misgivens have gone, though would there be a scenario where you would work with the old webforms rather than MVC?
    Also I am reading a lot about MVC4 coming out aaarrrg just as i start leaning one new thing a new version of it is onthe horizon.

    enjoy Devconnections.

  • Hello Paul,

    I won't be able to make it to Vegas.
    Will you a transcript/video of your talks be made available?

    Kind regards,

    HC

  • It is all about Rapid develoment vs a faster website. Some developers say that they can code just as fast in MVC as a webform ,but I don't believe that for a moment unless a person is to the point where he has duplicated all the things that web forms controls can do and now has his own private library. Isn't that where we heading? once you create some templates based off of the regular HTML control in your cshtml pages they will be cut and pasted all over the place? The only difference will be no viewstate and the seperation of the controller and model. I think a better idea would been beem to provide these generic templates

  • @starforce: I expect to see more Html Helpers like grids in the future, . Still there are a lot of helpers out there if you search for them. For example:
    - http://haacked.com/archive/2009/04/14/using-jquery-grid-with-asp.net-mvc.aspx

  • @HiredCode and @SeanR:
    I always post my slides and samples to http://deeptraining.com/litwin. However, I don't know if the session will be recorded.

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