8 ms·

ASP.NET MVC 4 Roadmap

49 points by ajma 15y ago

martymatheny 15y ago
The focus on mobile, HTML5 support, and cloud deployment all sounds very handy. Does anyone care to predict when the beta will ship?
- smhinsey 15y ago
  Given the roadmap there, I'd say that the wait won't be terribly long. I have been very impressed with the turnaround times on new versions of MVC so far. The feature that seems most likely to cause issues with a release would be Recipes because of their connection to NuGet. I'd expect to see a pretty feature complete CTP without that first, with the complete implementation being spread across one or two more. I have no inside line on this, but I've been working with it since v1 so I follow it pretty closely.
- ajma 15y ago
  My guess is somewhere between sept 13-16. That's PDC 2011.
  - josephcooney 15y ago
    I thought it had been re-branded as BUILD this year (and was going to have a massive Windows 8 focus). I've seen some reports of "PDC 2011" but then the dates and location are the same as build....unless they're going to run to conferences concurrently, which I doubt.
    - contextfree 15y ago
      Correct. There is no separate PDC this year. The focus of Build at least in the promotion is definitely on Windows 8, who knows to what extent that reflects the content.
edandersen 15y ago
MVC3 has always been extensible enough so you could add most of the major new features in the MVC4 roadmap. The "extra mile" polish you would normally add to MVC3 applications look like they will be in MVC4 as standard: * jQuery Mobile templates * Mobile/Desktop view switch API * EF Code First DB Migrations (finally, without having to rely on third party libraries such as MigratorDotNet) * Built-in JavaScript and CSS minimization Can't wait!
- smhinsey 15y ago
  I wonder if this is going to push the NH guys to do an official migrations package. You can already come pretty close to it just using the schema migration APIs, so they have a lot of the pieces. I'd love to see some competition in what I think is historically an under-addressed part of development on any given Microsoft stack.
  - traskjd 15y ago
    Our LightSpeed ORM product does schema migrations between a whole pile of databases and includes Visual Studio 2008 & 2010 integration for seeing the migrations, executing them, generating the SQL files etc. I haven't seen anyone else really pushing Migrations that hard yet in the .NET space. Would be nice to see others trying to improve this space.
    - smhinsey 15y ago
      Interesting, I've never heard of LightSpeed. I'll be honest that I have a near-zero level of trust for this type of software from vendors in the .NET space, but I'll definitely give it a look.
- skeletonjelly 15y ago
  > * EF Code First DB Migrations Orchard has this using NHibernate. Being unfamiliar with EF and NH though (long time LLBLGen user here) is this what you mean?
- Michiel 15y ago
latch 15y ago
Code-generation has always been a major annoyance for real (ya, I said it) developers using MS tools. It'll be interesting to see if recipes are able to do what decades of similar promises from MS have failed to deliver. The mention of a recipe for an AJAX grid is frightening though...like we are heading back into server-control world. Despite all the talk, MS never really bought into jQuery. Also, I worry when the 2nd feature listed is that the default CSS/theme (which no one uses and is pretty ugly) supports mobile devices. They mention deployment as a theme, but no feature to accompany it. It'll be interesting to see what they manage to do here. It's certainly a major pain point right now. Of course, none of this addresses the primary issues with ASP.NET MVC: it's much, much, slower to develop in than Rails or Django.
- codingthebeach 15y ago
  ASP.NET MVC is comparable to both Rails and Django in terms of speed, but you have to know what you're doing. Competency is required. But that shouldn't be a problem for a "real" developer such as yourself. ;)
- kenjackson 15y ago
  Of course, none of this addresses the primary issues with ASP.NET MVC: it's much, much, slower to develop in than Rails or Django. I'd say just the opposite. Things like deployment and things like gems are the big issues. Actually day to day dev work though, I think MVC is probably at least as productive as Rails or Django, if not moreso. But I think its personal taste more than anything else. Code-generation has always been a major annoyance for real (ya, I said it) developers using MS tools. It'll be interesting to see if recipes are able to do what decades of similar promises from MS have failed to deliver. I don't think Recipes are really meant to address codegen. It sounds like a simpler way to build Wizards, not much more than that. MS's solution to general codegen are things such as CCI (http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/ http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/).
  - spamizbad 15y ago
    I disagree. MVC is quite good, but as both a Django and MVC developer I'm still more productive with Django. Certain niceties of MVC break down once your project falls outside of the mold of a cookie-cutter CRUD app interfacing with a 100% Microsoft ecosystem. People have levied a similar criticism against Django (once you color too far outside the lines, things get hard fast) but with MVC it can creep up on you much faster. MVC shines if you treat it like a lightweight MVC framework and don't get caught up in doing things the "Microsoft" way -- this is massively counter-intuitive to anyone coming from a Python or Ruby background, who prefer to code in an idiomatic way by default. You can take advantage of its powerful routing system, various helper functions, and a decent templating language: Razor - which I hope Microsoft keeps and doesn't replace like it did to the 2 or 3 other templating syntax systems that proceeded it.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
God, I'm wrapping up a MVC3 app, I can't wait to sprint away and never, ever, ever come back. During this project I've, installed Visual Studio 3 times and my current installation leaves me still unable to debug Azure deployments and Microsoft has no fix for me but to reinstall Windows and start over. .NET and csharp are a joy, but I'll never touch a pure-Microsoft stack or anything I can't (easily) run in Mono ever again.
- josephcooney 15y ago
  What's the culprit do you think? Azure stuff? I've never seen problems like that with MVC3 (but given the gamut of all the crazy things I've seen I don't doubt you)
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    It's undoubtedly the Azure stuff. They had bad mirrors and redirects up for quite a while for VS SP1. Twitter revealed others with the same problem. That ruined the first install. The second install was okay with debugging a MVC project but the Azure emulator caused an uncaught exception in the .NET runtime. There was no indication of where the error was occurring, and like I said, no real troubleshooting steps available. I wish I could remember the error message. It was as if the runtime was just mocking me with it's complete lack of help.
- vailripper 15y ago
  Azure is terrible no doubt. However, we build on top of ASP.NET MVC and haven't had any complaints.

49 points by ajma 15y ago

The focus on mobile, HTML5 support, and cloud deployment all sounds very handy. Does anyone care to predict when the beta will ship?

smhinsey 15y ago
Given the roadmap there, I'd say that the wait won't be terribly long. I have been very impressed with the turnaround times on new versions of MVC so far. The feature that seems most likely to cause issues with a release would be Recipes because of their connection to NuGet. I'd expect to see a pretty feature complete CTP without that first, with the complete implementation being spread across one or two more. I have no inside line on this, but I've been working with it since v1 so I follow it pretty closely.
ajma 15y ago
My guess is somewhere between sept 13-16. That's PDC 2011.
- josephcooney 15y ago
  I thought it had been re-branded as BUILD this year (and was going to have a massive Windows 8 focus). I've seen some reports of "PDC 2011" but then the dates and location are the same as build....unless they're going to run to conferences concurrently, which I doubt.
  - contextfree 15y ago
    Correct. There is no separate PDC this year. The focus of Build at least in the promotion is definitely on Windows 8, who knows to what extent that reflects the content.

edandersen 15y ago

MVC3 has always been extensible enough so you could add most of the major new features in the MVC4 roadmap. The "extra mile" polish you would normally add to MVC3 applications look like they will be in MVC4 as standard: * jQuery Mobile templates * Mobile/Desktop view switch API * EF Code First DB Migrations (finally, without having to rely on third party libraries such as MigratorDotNet) * Built-in JavaScript and CSS minimization Can't wait!

smhinsey 15y ago
I wonder if this is going to push the NH guys to do an official migrations package. You can already come pretty close to it just using the schema migration APIs, so they have a lot of the pieces. I'd love to see some competition in what I think is historically an under-addressed part of development on any given Microsoft stack.
- traskjd 15y ago
  Our LightSpeed ORM product does schema migrations between a whole pile of databases and includes Visual Studio 2008 & 2010 integration for seeing the migrations, executing them, generating the SQL files etc. I haven't seen anyone else really pushing Migrations that hard yet in the .NET space. Would be nice to see others trying to improve this space.
  - smhinsey 15y ago
    Interesting, I've never heard of LightSpeed. I'll be honest that I have a near-zero level of trust for this type of software from vendors in the .NET space, but I'll definitely give it a look.
skeletonjelly 15y ago
> * EF Code First DB Migrations Orchard has this using NHibernate. Being unfamiliar with EF and NH though (long time LLBLGen user here) is this what you mean?
Michiel 15y ago

latch 15y ago

Code-generation has always been a major annoyance for real (ya, I said it) developers using MS tools. It'll be interesting to see if recipes are able to do what decades of similar promises from MS have failed to deliver. The mention of a recipe for an AJAX grid is frightening though...like we are heading back into server-control world. Despite all the talk, MS never really bought into jQuery. Also, I worry when the 2nd feature listed is that the default CSS/theme (which no one uses and is pretty ugly) supports mobile devices. They mention deployment as a theme, but no feature to accompany it. It'll be interesting to see what they manage to do here. It's certainly a major pain point right now. Of course, none of this addresses the primary issues with ASP.NET MVC: it's much, much, slower to develop in than Rails or Django.

codingthebeach 15y ago
ASP.NET MVC is comparable to both Rails and Django in terms of speed, but you have to know what you're doing. Competency is required. But that shouldn't be a problem for a "real" developer such as yourself. ;)
kenjackson 15y ago
Of course, none of this addresses the primary issues with ASP.NET MVC: it's much, much, slower to develop in than Rails or Django. I'd say just the opposite. Things like deployment and things like gems are the big issues. Actually day to day dev work though, I think MVC is probably at least as productive as Rails or Django, if not moreso. But I think its personal taste more than anything else. Code-generation has always been a major annoyance for real (ya, I said it) developers using MS tools. It'll be interesting to see if recipes are able to do what decades of similar promises from MS have failed to deliver. I don't think Recipes are really meant to address codegen. It sounds like a simpler way to build Wizards, not much more than that. MS's solution to general codegen are things such as CCI (http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/ http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/).
- spamizbad 15y ago
  I disagree. MVC is quite good, but as both a Django and MVC developer I'm still more productive with Django. Certain niceties of MVC break down once your project falls outside of the mold of a cookie-cutter CRUD app interfacing with a 100% Microsoft ecosystem. People have levied a similar criticism against Django (once you color too far outside the lines, things get hard fast) but with MVC it can creep up on you much faster. MVC shines if you treat it like a lightweight MVC framework and don't get caught up in doing things the "Microsoft" way -- this is massively counter-intuitive to anyone coming from a Python or Ruby background, who prefer to code in an idiomatic way by default. You can take advantage of its powerful routing system, various helper functions, and a decent templating language: Razor - which I hope Microsoft keeps and doesn't replace like it did to the 2 or 3 other templating syntax systems that proceeded it.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

God, I'm wrapping up a MVC3 app, I can't wait to sprint away and never, ever, ever come back. During this project I've, installed Visual Studio 3 times and my current installation leaves me still unable to debug Azure deployments and Microsoft has no fix for me but to reinstall Windows and start over. .NET and csharp are a joy, but I'll never touch a pure-Microsoft stack or anything I can't (easily) run in Mono ever again.

josephcooney 15y ago
What's the culprit do you think? Azure stuff? I've never seen problems like that with MVC3 (but given the gamut of all the crazy things I've seen I don't doubt you)
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  It's undoubtedly the Azure stuff. They had bad mirrors and redirects up for quite a while for VS SP1. Twitter revealed others with the same problem. That ruined the first install. The second install was okay with debugging a MVC project but the Azure emulator caused an uncaught exception in the .NET runtime. There was no indication of where the error was occurring, and like I said, no real troubleshooting steps available. I wish I could remember the error message. It was as if the runtime was just mocking me with it's complete lack of help.
vailripper 15y ago
Azure is terrible no doubt. However, we build on top of ASP.NET MVC and haven't had any complaints.