

Ask HN: Has anyone chosen ASP.NET MVC 2 over Rails for their web app - terrellm

ASP.NET MVC 2 just came out a few months back and Rails 3 is coming soon so I thought it would be a good time to revisit this topic.<p>I enjoy working in Rails, but I won't be doing the majority of the coding on our next web app.  Therefore, the enjoyment factor doesn't matter as much as the business aspect and particularly how long the code will last before having to go through a major revision.<p>Has anyone chosen to develop a web app in ASP.NET MVC 2 instead of Rails?  If so, do you feel it was the right decision after having gone through the process?
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TomOfTTB
I haven't developed a production app with MVC 2 yet but I've tested it for use
in my organization and I've played around with RoR. Given that experience I'd
put forth the following points...

Pros:

1\. Despite what RoR fans claim I think you can get things done faster in
ASP.NET MVC 2 (if you use Visual Studio). All the usability enhancements
combined with technology like WCF simply help you get things done faster
(though there's a down side to this advantage in the cons)

2\. On the above note I still think C# is a vastly superior language
especially now that it's essentially "borrowed" the best parts of Python

Cons:

1\. The main reason to go with a MVC framework is ease of testing and the RoR
community is far more robust and hence offers far more testing options

2\. (Related to Pros #1) Using Microsoft technology like WCF creates
performance woes. I would question using it on a really high performance site

3\. You really need to buy Microsoft servers. I haven't even tested MVC 2 on
Mono but MVC 1 was spotty and not officially supported

4\. Support is minimal on the Internet. Again this boils down to there being
far, far more Ruby developers (Let's face it ASP.NET MVC is a subset of the
already smaller ASP.NET developer community)

I don't know if that helps but those are my initial thoughts.

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billpaetzke
Here's a high-profile ASP.NET MVC site: <http://stackoverflow.com>

How about you ask them here: <http://meta.stackoverflow.com/>

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terrellm
There's a Microsoft Case Study on the site here:
[http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows-
Server-2008-R2-...](http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows-
Server-2008-R2-Standard/Stack-Overflow/Developers-See-Faster-Web-Coding-
Better-Performance-with-Model-View-Controller/4000006676)

Based on timelines, it looks like they developed in the first version of MVC.

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ndc
ASP.NET MVC skips the whole ORM part and let programmers deal with the issue
however they like. I find this refreshing compared to Rails 2 which enforces
ActiveRecord. I hear Rails 3 decouples ActiveRecord but I haven't seen it in
action.

This is important if you have a plan to build front end to legacy database.

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barrydahlberg
I have worked in MVC 2 and while I feel it was the right decision based my
skillset and the existing code base in the company, I envy the relative
maturity and stability of the Rails framework. The fact that there is a "Rails
Way" is good.

Personally it's usually other factors that make the decision for me.

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cmelbye
Question related to this topic: If one were to use ASP.NET MVC 2, would one
have to use Microsoft's development tools and Microsoft's servers, or are
there viable open source alternatives?

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crnbrdeater
You don't have to use their dev tools but I am not sure why you would not want
to. You get tons out of the box with Visual Studio Express...and its free. You
are also free to use the command line to compile your apps, but again I am not
sure why you would want to.

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Daishiman
Without plugin support Visual Studio is good as dead to me. I have several
plugins which I consider essential, and I wouldn't put up with developing with
a purposely crippled tool.

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d2viant
Are you talking specifically about the Express editions? Visual Studio has had
plugin support for awhile. Resharper comes to mind immediately, among others.

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fleitz
I considered it, and although I love F# I still went with rails because of a
lack of sass. I even considered porting sass to F# like nhaml.

