Okay, I watched the first Visual Web Developer (VWD) video. Questions for anyone out of the first grade with this stuff; four questions: (1) I'm building a We

Okay, I watched the first Visual Web Developer (VWD) video. Questions for anyone out of the first grade with this stuff; four questions: (1) I'm building a Web site where the server side code is in Visual Basic .NET with use of classes from the .NET Framework and also from ASP.NET and ADO.NET, but as far as I know I'm not using the 'framework' of 'model, view, controller' (MVC) and, so far, see no such need. What's the big deal of MVC? That is, the code for one of my Web pages has standard, 'reserved named', ASP.NET 'event handlers' Sub Page_Init Sub Page_Load Sub Page_PreRender Sub Page_Unload So, when I need to do something, say, with SQL Server database or communicate with a server in my 'server farm', e.g., my session state server and two more I have, I just write a function in the code of the Web page and call it from an appropriate one of those standard ASP.NET event handlers. Question 1: I see nothing wrong with this approach to 'code organization' and, thus, am missing the big deal of MVC. What the heck am I missing about the value of MVC? (2) [Long question] What am I missing on The video explained how the VWD 'integrated development environment' (IDE) is easier to use as something to type into than Microsoft's Notepad. It's also easier to use than a sharp stick on a wet clay tablet! But I don't type into Notepad and, instead, use my favorite programmable editor I've used for essentially all my typing for some decades, KEdit. That editor is a PC version of IBM's mainframe editor XEDIT, and the macro language is Mike Cowlishaw's elegant Rexx. From all I can see writing code, KEdit looks much better than Visual Studio, especially since my project 'folder' is really simple and easy to understand and since I get to write macros to automate some work whenever helpful. The times I looked at all the files Visual Studio creates for a 'project'; they were a lot to understand; I didn't understand them; and I fear that in case there were problems I would have to understand them. Bummer. E.g., here's a variable: What is its type, that is, where is its Visual Basic (VB) Dim statement, and what is the scope of the variable, i.g., where the heck was it declared? Where else have I used this variable? My guess would be that any good, programmable editor could be as powerful as KEdit or better -- Emacs anyone? E.g., some of my comments are really 'code section delimiters' recognized by some of my KEdit macros and, this way, I can get some easy views of the overall organization of my code, e.g., for scope of names. E.g., my most recent nice KEdit macro is BEIDC for 'begin, end insert dated comment'. So, I get, say ' BEGIN Modified at 11:31:29 on Monday, February 17th, 2014. ' END Modified at 11:31:29 on Monday, February 17th, 2014. and then type code and comments between these two. Another macro lets me see all lines with, say, the fourth token on one of those two lines, and that operation is sufficient for me, given one of those two comments, to move to just where the other one is. And I have macros that make use of KEdit's 'point' facility that lets me give names to 'pointers' to particular lines. One macros shows me all such 'pointers' and saves them to a file for loading, say, the next day. So, with these pointers, I can jump around in a file quickly. So, maybe the code I am writing needs to draw from three other places in my file; so have four such 'line pointers'. Works well, and a dozen more lines of macro code can make it work better. For 'Intellisense', from all I can see and saw in the VWD video, no thanks: For the classes in the .NET Framework, there are some thousands, my guess, 20,000+, Web pages of documentation at Microsoft's MSDN Web site. So, before I use a .NET class I download the relevant Web pages of documentation from MSDN and, for each such Web page, make a little abstract. I put the abstract in one of four simple text files (one file for each of Windows, VB, TCP/IP, etc., and SQL Server) I maintain with KEdit. Currently I have 5000+ such Web pages and abstracts and can find relevant documentation quickly just by using the KEdit search tools on the text files with the abstracts -- each abstract has both the URL of the Web page at MSDN and also the tree name of the Web page on my hard disk. In my code, for crucial such Web pages, I put a VB comment with the title of the Web page and the tree name on my hard disk of my downloaded copy of the Web page. Then in my editor, one keystroke displays the Web page. So, if I want to check something in the documentation, it's one or a few keystrokes in my editor, and, then, I get the relevant Web page with essentially the most detailed documentation Microsoft has. Also relevant is my earlier code with tested uses of that .NET class; the way my work is organized makes it easy for me to find such code. Of course, I also have files of notes, old programs, and old test programs and can also have the corresponding tree names in my comments. I'm not getting just why, net, in practice, 'Intellisense' is better or as good. My code is just awash in comments at various levels, much like writing a technical paper: For me, when I return to some code six months later, those comments are a great advantage. But writing those comments makes good usage of the power of KEdit, my macros, and even my usual spell checker -- with Visual Studio Web Developer I'd miss such functionality. I do not like the way Visual Studio uses the screen and makes use of many small windows. Instead, I just use the window management facilities of Windows. Typically I have a dozen+ windows on my screen, and I keep them organized partly with some code triggered by one icon in the UL corner of the screen; then all the windows maintain their Z-order but are arranged so that the UL corner of each window is equally spaced on a line from the top center or so of the screen to the left center. Then at least a little of each window is visible, and I can see all of any window easily from just a slight change in the Z-order without moving any of the windows. Net, the video made Visual Web Developer look like a big step down from just my usage of a good text editor. Question 2: What am I missing on why VWD and Intellisense are better than what I'm already doing? (3) Hearing the title Visual Web Developer, I guessed that the software was a way to position 'controls' on a screen, set values for relevant HTML and CSS attributes, e.g., fonts, colors, borders, and then have the ASP.NET code for those controls written automatically or some such. As it is, if I have a complicated Web page to lay out, 'design', then I use, say, Microsoft's PhotoDraw to decide what the page should look like. Question 3: Are there better tools for designing Web pages than just something like PhotoDraw? What are they? Are there tools that would take such a graphical design and generate the corresponding ASP.NET class instances and class method invocations? What are such tools? Are they actually helpful, worthwhile? (4) The VWD video was writing JavaScript to generate a text box. Curious. What's the point here? While Microsoft's ASP.NET has written some JavaScript for me, so far I have yet to write a single line of it and see no need to. My guess is that the JavaScript, running in the client's browser, adds the text box to the 'document object model' (DOM) at the client. Question 4: Is this so? Or is the point that the JavaScript code actually runs on the server and generates the HTML and CSS 'mark up' on the server and does not send that JavaScript code to the client?