Professional ASP.Net MVC 1.0

I don't think I have ever had a better introduction to a new technology than this book. In particular, the Nerd Dinner tutorial that opens the book is perhaps the most concisely written piece of technical writing I have ever come across. Each following chapter takes a different aspect of development (security, views, controllers, etc.), and goes into greater depth. Of particular use to those of us in the trenches are the later chapters on how to integrate ASP.Net MVC into existing WebForms applications. Since most projects are upgrades rather than new development, I can see relying on this chapter over and over. You won't finish this book an expert, no book can promise you that (and if it did, it would be a big, fat lie). But you will finish this book with the skills to write production code using this framework. Personally, I have found that this technology makes web programming fun and rigorous at the same time. Not a bad way to make a living.

This is an excellent overview of what ASP.NET MVC 1.0 is and how to use it. The first chapter starts out with a full how-to on building an actual application/website using the framework, instead of the usual "Hello World" example. This gives you a huge perspective on how to build an actual real world application, then the following chapters give you a complete overview of all the features that are included in ASP.NET MVC 1.0. It even discusses "Why's" to doing stuff, not just the "How's". This book does assume you're already familiar with ASP.NET WebForms ("Traditional ASP.NET") development; at least the basics. I recommend this book for anyone looking to learn ASP.NET MVC, and it's an awesome reference.

The first chapter of this book is a great tutorial/introduction to ASP.NET MVC. The rest of the book is a much more in-depth guide/reference to the MVC framework. The writing style is very casual and almost "cheeky", and makes it an enjoyable read. The security chapter is just as entertaining as it is informative. This is a must-read book for *any* .NET developer.

This book takes a great approach to explaining MVC to existing ASP.NET developers. Using the *huge* Nerd Dinner chapter to gloss over most of MVC's key points helps draw you into the topic early on. Starting with that comprehensive introduction, each subsequent chapter allows you to drill down into individual features with useful context. I think the authors are wise not to ignore WebForms. While the book may be about MVC, almost everyone reading it probably has a background in WebForms. Relating MVC to WebForms and showing that there doesn't have to be this VB vs. C# type adversarial relationship between them is important. It also serves to explain some features of MVC in terms that are more concrete and easier to understand. As someone who does a bit of technical writing, I was particularly impressed by how effortlessly the book reads. That's something easy to take for granted as you're reading it, but rare to find in a technical book. The authors weren't afraid to inject some personality and humor into the book. That quality definitely helps make the topic more easily digestible. All in all, I'm happy that I read it. I thought I knew ASP.NET MVC pretty well going in, but I definitely benefited from this book.

Great book! This book has one of the best example application walkthroughs that I have seen. The nerd dinner example takes up the first section of the book and it's a great introduction to asp.net MVC. The rest of the book explains digs into more details and even goes into test driven development and professional topics such as IOC using structuremap etc. This book has been a lot of fun and is an easy read.