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Steven HarmanSteven Harman is a passionate developer who believes that writing great software isn't just a job, its a craft.

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You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net

Last night I finally took the time to watch the ScottGu and ScottHa presentations on the new MVC framework that Scott first mentioned back in March at the MVP Summit. First let me say that I’m really excited about this move, especially with my good buddy Phil at the helm.

But I’m also excited because being the pragmatic developer that I try to be, I realize that much of the world only eats what it’s fed from Microsoft†. That being the case, I’m for any move that will help the large number of developers out there who are stuck with the broken and testability nightmare that is WebForms.

What’s it called?

Model View Controller DiagramDuring the Scotts' presentations and throughout the barrage of blog posts in my RSS reader I’ve heard/seen a wide variety of names for this new framework. Some of the most popular were:

  • System.Web.Mvc
  • ASP.NET MVC
  • MVC for ASP.NET
  • Scott’s MVC Framework

That is just way too many names for the same thing. So, in the spirit of keeping it DRY, and to avoid another naming mis-step like the whole Atlas/ASP.net AJAX fiasco, I propose that we refer to it as mvc.net.

It’s mvc.net to me

That’s right, I intentionally did not capitalize it... I just don’t see what the caps buy us other than making me hold down the Shift key while trying to type. So there you have it. This day forward, or at least until some one comes up with something better, I’ll refer to the Microsoft-ASP.NET-System.Web-MVC-byScottGo-Framework as mvc.net.

As several people pointed out in the comments, the name mvc.asp was a type-o... it was supposed to be mvc.net, as mentioned in the post title.

† = I’d rather not debate why or why not developers are constricted to only using Microsoft technologies as opposed to some excellent alternatives like MonoRail, Spring, RoR, Django, (did that cover most everyone?)... but would rather we all agree that this is a reality in the world in which we live, OK?

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What others are saying.

# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Jeremy D. Miller
Oct 12, 2007
I suggested "Microsoft does Rails." The Redmond contingent wasn't that amused. It does need a name. "ScottGu's new MVC framework" is a mouthful.
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Steven Harman
Oct 12, 2007
>> Microsoft does Rails

Haha! I love it!

Along the same lines, what about Redmond on Rails, which would lend itself nicely to the same acronym, RoR, further muddying the waters. Seems like the kind of thing Mr. Ballmer would be proud of!

We are trying to Do No Evil by default...


Good think there are guys like the Scott(s) to fight the good fight for us.

# You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar DotNetKicks.com
Oct 12, 2007
You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Dan Hounshell
Oct 12, 2007
I'm sorry to tell you, but as someone who works on the ASP.NET sites, it will have to be capitalized. The people I work with at Microsoft are sticklers on that. I think there is a person who's job it is to proofread everything making sure that anything .NET is capitalized. Other than that small sticking point, I'm on board with you. MVC.NET !!
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Steven Harman
Oct 12, 2007
@Dan, what about the logos in the upper right-hand corner of the asp.net AJAX site?

Perhaps that one slipped by marketing. :)
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Eber Irigoyen
Oct 12, 2007
mvc.net or mvc.asp???

I actually like mvc.net... or MVC.NET better
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Haacked
Oct 12, 2007
But MVC for WPF would probably look different. Let's just call it ASP.NET on Tracks.
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Scott
Oct 12, 2007
I myself plan to refer to it as "flaming pickles!".

"Have you got the new flaming pickles bits yet?"

"My new site is handling over 50Kreq./sec. It uses flaming pickles with an AS/400 backend."
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Dan Hounshell
Oct 13, 2007
Ah, that's just a logo. Something silly some silly designer came up with. It doesn't count :)
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Simone Chiaretta
Oct 13, 2007
Steve, in the title you say mvc.net, in the text you say mvc.asp.
MVC.NET rocks :)
# Some clarifications on my opinion about ALT.NET
Gravatar CodeClimber
Oct 14, 2007
Some clarifications on my opinion about ALT.NET
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Adam Nofsinger
Oct 15, 2007
Since you listed mvc.net and mvc.asp, I will cast my lot with the other comments saying I prefer mvc.net of those two choices. I'm thinking that mvc.asp was just a type though, since mvc.net makes much more sense.

I like your ideas about not capitalizing mvc.net, but I think MS would have to change the whole convention then just to keep things consistent - asp.net, .net, linq, etc. So, I think MS would need to have MVC.NET
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Steven Harman
Oct 15, 2007
@Eber, @Simone, @Adam: You are correct... mvc.asp was a type-o, Mea Culpa!

So for the record, I am proposing the name I mentioned in the post title - mvc.asp.
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar kevin
Oct 16, 2007
I followed you all the way to "I’d rather not debate why or why not developers are constricted to only using Microsoft technologies..." and then I was lost. If you'd rather not debate, then why bring up the debate at all ;)

If we have to choose a name then I agree it's MVC.NET, but I get a little qweezy(?) when I say this because "MVC" is a design pattern, so it's not really a product - it's a an idea, a concept.

But I'll do whatever we need to do to not have an ATLAS and then an ASP.NET AJAX naming debacle.
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Steven Harman
Oct 16, 2007
@kevin, I suppose you have a point... :)

I suppose I was trying to stop any debate of the issue before it started by stating that I did not want to discuss it here, in this post. Perhaps I could have been more explicit, but oh well.
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Adam Nofsinger
Oct 19, 2007
@Kevin

Well, AJAX isn't a design principle, but its not really a "product" either. When I look at MVC.NET, I think it says "This is an implementation of a MVC design pattern conforming web framework built on top of the .NET framework."
# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Tyler Gannon
Oct 22, 2007
MVC.Net

Though I agree with the point in general, I think the muddying waters you spoke of are just the reason to adopt the de-facto standard csharp naming convention, which capitalizes all words and acronyms. The exceptions are keywords, names of private and temp variables, and certain quasi-keywords such as "csharp."

Though I don't particularly like the look-and-feel of that naming convention, it does serve to differentiate .Net projects from other technologies, and from web site names.

# re: You Say MVC for ASP.NET, I Say mvc.net
Gravatar Vijay Santhanam
Nov 07, 2007
mvc.asp.net a la` ajax.asp.net?
# TDD DI ASP.NET MVC Made Better with StructureMap's Fluent API, Oh My!
Gravatar StevenHarman.net
Dec 13, 2007
TDD DI ASP.NET MVC Made Better with StructureMap's Fluent API, Oh My!
# A New Year's Resolution for Framework Designers
Gravatar StevenHarman.net
Dec 17, 2007
A New Year's Resolution for Framework Designers
# Let's tag all ASP.NET MVC contents with aspnetmvc
Gravatar CodeClimber
Mar 11, 2008
Let's tag all ASP.NET MVC contents with aspnetmvc
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