I began with ASP and a little Access database some 14 years ago. I scrounged my way to become pretty adept at providing solutions with ASP, Javascript and SQL…until ASP.NET came out. That's when I think I got lazy. And I've never worked so hard at being lazy…a lazy programmer that is…building my classes and plumbing my database access and playing with my datagrids. 

Probably 8 months ago I just became totally fed up with the performance and bloat of my ASP.NET applications…I wasn't getting the performance I thought I should. 

Really, it was getting more into AJAX that brought me to this realization of my laziness. I, like probably everyone else, started using the magic Update Panel only to realize that it's really just hiding the fact that my page is doing a full page lifecycle postback. Ouch. So, I can add a progress panel to inform the user that I'm gonna be a while…nice. ahem.

Then I wrote my own javascript callback and rediscovered the joys of writing my own code. And it wasn't easy, but it felt good. You know, like when you exercise that muscle for the first time in years…it HURTS so good. My callback took a fraction of the time as my postback/UpdatePanel. And I was using html controls again, not server side controls. Is that allowed in an ASP.NET project?! 

I hear you laughing at me. Like I said, I was lazy. Those server side controls with all their built in wonderfullness can lull me to sleep while I wait for them to finally load in the page.

So, I was rediscovering the joys of really going back to the way I was coding in my ASP days, but in C#. But I was pissed at WebForms for having done this to me (like WebForms really have a mind of their own and a malicious intent to harm me). 

And do you know where I turned? Ruby on Rails.

Do you know what I found when I got there? A bunch of pissed off Microsoft ASP.NET developers much more talented than I. 

What does any of this have to do with ASP.NET MVC? I am so very excited about what I'm seeing and learning because it's like RoR is coming to ASP.NET. It definitely has me excited again about being an ASP.NET developer.

As a results, I'm following this very closely.