No, it’s not pointless, but it is difficult to wrap your head around even though the pattern itself is ridiculously simple. There are tons of misinformation out there and various groups who battle over the proper way. I think with WPF and Silverlight you should use MVVM or you’ll be over coding and attempting to solve problems in a new model the “old” win forms methodology which just leads you into trouble. This is more the case in Silverlight since everything is required to be asynchronous (hacks around this are possible, but you should just pick another platform).
I’d suggest reading this article Simplifying the WPF TreeView by Using the ViewModel Pattern
carefully to see how MVVM can be implemented well and allow you to change your win forms mentality to the new way of thinking in MVVM. In short when you want to get something done apply the logic to the ViewModel first not the View. You want to select an item? Change an icon? Don’t iterate over UI elements, just update the models properties and let data-binding do the nitty gritty.
