ASP.NET MVC reminds me of old Classic ASP spaghetti code

Question

I just went through some MVC tutorials after checking this site out for a while. Is it just me, or does MVC View pages bring back HORRIBLE flashbacks of Classic ASP spaghet

Answer 1

I think the problem with the ASP.NET view engine is that there are no restrictions on what you can do, since its just a .NET language embedded in XHTML.

In contrast, take a look at the Django template engine. In the Django framework, the controllers and models are written using the full-blown Python language, but the view template engine defines a restricted language which only provides basic programming constructs (conditional, loops, etc). This restricted language resembles Python but it isn't actually Python, so it cannot invoke arbitrary code like external libraries. It can only access the model data that is passed in to the view.

Any view engine that embeds a general purpose language is going to have the problem where people abuse it and do things they shouldn't in the view. So with those engines you really need to have the due diligence to constrain yourself from doing things other than access the model data.