Herding Code 64: Phil Haack on MVC 2

Episode 64

The guys grill Phil on ASP.NET MVC2, and introduce a new segment: Abusive Questions From Twitter!

• Phil starts with the new <%: code block syntax, IHtmlString, HtmlString, MvcHtmlString
• Jon asks about DisplayFor, EditorFor improvements
• Phil discusses validation improvements – validation extensibility and client-side validation
• MVC 2 is built on .NET 3.5 SP1
• Phil talks about the productivity focus for MVC 2
• New minimal templates, minimized web.config
• Phil comments on the recent trend in software development towards streamlining – Windows 7, Snow Leopard, and how that’s also being applied to MVC and Webforms
• Phil talks about his work on the Webforms Menu Control to clean up the markup, and how developers will opt-in to new but possibly breaking features
• K. Scott asks about the new Areas feature 
• Phil talks about Virtual Path Providers working in medium trust, but not until .NET 4
• Kevin asks about what other features weren’t available due to maintaining .NET 3.5 support, and Phil ruminates on how the dynamic keyword could work
• Phil speculates how named parameters could be helpful
• Scott K asks about when MVC will get more opinionated, perhaps including dependency injection by default.
• Phil talks about how MVC has never really been weak on the Model side, and how often people are really complaining about data access. Nothing new on that now, but it might be a focus in MVC 3.
• Jon asks about bringing in some focused project templates.
• Scott K (again) asks Phil about bringing dependency injection into MVC. Phil talks about why it’s not in there yet, and that you should vote for it in connect if you want it.
• Phil discusses how bugs are prioritized on the ASP.NET team.
• Scott K asks if Phil has a favorite feature. Phil likes the HTML Encoding syntax best of all.
• Kevin asks the standard “when will the Spark view engine replace the webforms view engine” question.
• Jon asks about which frameworks and community projects Phil’s taking inspiration from.
• Phil talks about how he’s using Subtext to get personal experience with how the new features are working.
• Scott K asks about adding in auto-mapping
• Jon introduces a new Herding Code segment: Abusive Question From Twitter. We start with one by @alanstevens: why we should care about ASP.NET when there are so many other web frameworks out there?
• Scott K talks about how people conflate languages and platforms.
• Scott K tries to sneak in an abusive Twitter question, but fails.
• Kevin asks what’s changing to make TDD work better in .NET and Visual Studio.
• K. Scott talks about how he’s converted his blog over to run on Subtext.
• Phil talks about his experiences in developing Subtext, and how that’s been a great way to get exposure to other open source projects and developers.
• Jon asks about how improving the data access system for Subtext, because stored procedures make him cry.
• Jon asks about the CodePlex foundation, and Scott K complains about how it’s not very transparent.
• Phil starts complaining about how newborn babies make it hard to sleep, and things fizzle out.

Show Links:

• Phil Haack's Blog
• HTML Encoding Code Blocks
• Brad Wilson’s post on Enterprise Library Validation in MVC 2
• Spark View Engine
• Subtext blogging engine
• MVC Turbine
• AutoMapper
• Autofac
• Our interview with Ted Leung
• CodePlex Foundation

Download / Listen:

Herding Code 64 - Phil Haack on MVC 2