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Poll: What do you think of ASP.NET Web Forms?

March 14, 2011, 6:48 AM PDT

Takeaway: Justin James admits that he’s not a fan of ASP.NET Web Forms, but he knows that some of his fellow developers like it. Tell us whether you think ASP.NET Web Forms is horrible.

Every time I need to work on an ASP.NET Web Forms project, I feel a cold wind blow over me. To be honest, I dislike ASP.NET Web Forms; I think that it is a really confusing paradigm; and it leads to some truly awful code. I have given up writing ASP.NET Web Forms code other than maintenance on existing applications. However, I know developers who still like it a lot.

I’m curious to know what Programming and Development readers think of it. Do you think it’s horrible, tolerable, or a wonderful tool? Please answer the following poll question, and then let me know why you voted the way you did in the forums.

What do you think of ASP.NET Web Forms?

ASP.NET Web Forms is the best tool for the job.

ASP.NET Web Forms is a necessary evil.

I dislike ASP.NET Web Forms.

I don't have an opinion about ASP.NET Web Forms.

J.Ja

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About Justin James

Justin James is an employee of Levit & James, Inc. in a multidisciplinary role that combines programming, network management, and system administration. He has been blogging at TechRepublic since 2005.

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5 Votes

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Contributr

Personally

Sterling "chip" Camden 14th Mar 2011

I felt that ASP.NET unnecessarily complicated matters over regular ASP in a vain attempt at correctness. Ugly old PHP marches on.

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4 Votes

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WebForms is a scourge upon man

terjeb@... 15th Mar 2011

Any technology that tries to wrap the Forms paradigm around web technologies should be banned from civilized conversation and development. The paradigm is an anti-pattern that encourages and at times forces un-maintainability on a project.

Read up on Rails and other sensible web technologies, then try out ASP.NET MVC if you need to develop on the Microsoft platform.

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2 Votes

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Evil, yes, necessary, not at all.

terjeb@... 16th Mar 2011

Try ASP.NET MVC, it beats Forms in every single aspect, and it makes for maintainable applications. It doesn't fight the protocol, it embraces the protocol. It doesn't rely on "magic" stuff and meaningless "state" code on the web page.

It's as close to Rails as you can get without actually doing Rails, and Rails (and similar frameworks) is a superior way of developing web-based applications.

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0 Votes

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The IDE is simply the best.

herbmeehan 13th May 2011

I can't get over this, and that's one of the reasons why I absolutely LOVE ASP.NET! Visual Studio is a world class IDE. Nothing in the PHP world even comes close. As for ASP.NET specifically... the built-in libraries, validation tools, and uniform code and uniform standards makes it easy to rapidly create web applications.

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1 Vote

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I like the quickness

malaykp Updated - 14th Apr 2011

I like programming with ASP.NET forms, as it always helped me giving some quick and elegant looking web solutions to my clients.

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1 Vote

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ASP.NET is the best

varsanikp 10th Apr 2011

For me ASP.NET is best. I know many other web development tools, scripts and languages but I found ASP.NET is more handy, easy to use and quickest way for web development.

Many people don't like it just because they are good in other language and using ASP.NET as a beginner. For me, I know java but I don't like it at all just because I am very good in .NET but just biginner in Java. In fact I never tried to learn Java in depth and I always say Java is bad language.

I think you are facing the same thing.

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