But dumb, passive data structures still have their place in that "Model", and unfortunately, those are usually referred to as model. Note how I picked up your q

But dumb, passive data structures still have their place in that "Model", and unfortunately, those are usually referred to as model. Note how I picked up your quotes and capitalization for the former, that's very helpful here. This is really where I see the root of why MVC is such a useless term: the "view" feels intuitively unambiguous, there's always something that is very tempting to declare model and everything else will either be declared controller in one broad sweep or assigned to one of the other two in an elaborate act of design-by-committee (even if you're all alone and it's only the different positions in your head). Personally, I've made it a pet heuristic to blanketly assume the worst whenever I hear MVC. Perhaps there's good code out there despite its makers trying to find salvation in those troublesome letters, but I assume the false positive rate to be acceptably low.