Transition to MVC when available, but without webforms? [closed]

Question

Facts:

• I am a new web developer. Rather experienced in WinForms app, RDBMS etc, but it was until recently that I joined the web world programming
• Currently feeling comfortable with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, webforms.

I want to wait for VS2012 and MVC4 to be officially out, and then to start my learning regarding all the new stuff I have to learn.

Until then, I have some small projects that I need to develop and no time to take the learning curve of MVC.

I want to spend my time wisely until I start with MVC4. Also, I don’t like the logic of webforms as it mixes all together, regardeless of the fact that is tempting you to develop fast.

What is a good approach for this?

I have thought of the following combos:

• Having Web Services in the backend providing JSON to front end HTML pages, with jQuery for the UI;
• ASP.NET web pages with jQuery. (With or without web services?)

Answer 1

Personally, I'd suggest you to start straight off with MVC3, especially if you have small projects. It's quite intuitive and especially if you don't like the structuring of WebForms it's probably the best way to get started.

To your proposed options:

Having WEB Services in the backend providing JSON to front end html pages with Jquery for the UI
Sure, if you have a lot of experiences with WEB services that might work for you, but attention to the client-side. We recently switched from WebForms to creating rich client JavaScript frontends and ASP.net MVC3 backends which provide a REST like interface exposing the data in JSON. Regarding the front-end this is not trivial. Just using jQuery won't necessarily be enough, especially if the site grows, code tends to be quickly quite unmaintainable. In that case I'd suggest you taking a look at client-side "frameworks" like Backbone, JavaScriptMVC, Spine etc..

ASP.NET web pages with jquery. (with or without web services?)
That might work, but again, I'd say in that case you might also switch to MVC directly.

tl;dr: Try to take a quick look at an MVC3 app sample and play around for a couple of hours with it. That'll give you a quick insight into how it works and probably that's already enough to get started, especially for small projects. (I personally found WebForms more complicated)