>"gently" pushing locked in MS web devs out of the darkness of that Web Forms madness
Minor nitpick on your otherwise positive comment, we have been using ASP.NET MVC for almost ten years now (ok eight). Webforms have long been a thing of the past, at least in the circles most devs I know move in.
From my admittedly limited perspective, it just NOW seems that Microsoft is really pushing for devs to meet up with real web development.
I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with MS devs who only know how to develop with web forms. They've never heard of grunt, node, MVC (the concept in general, let alone the option in .NET), SASS, NoSQL, RWD and the list goes on and on. It's like they've been living in a closet.
Not that they have to use ANY of those I listed -- but to KNOW such things exist!
For so long it seemed MS's mantra was "keep using only our stuff, its okay, don't look out the window at everything else going on". And so many that I've met just said "okay".
Now I feel there is a concerted effort from them to reverse that and really push education beyond the MS closet; it is very interesting to watch devs come out into the sun, blinking.
Again, just amongst the MS devs I've had the pleasure of working around, talking to online and off, at meetups and at jobs. But yes, only from my limited circle. Never meant to imply anything other than: I'm excited for MS devs and myself, as I'm actually wanting to dip my toe in the water as well and pick up .NET.
I work on a 12 year old application that's still current, and we're just now making the transition from web forms to MVC in that application. It's so nice that MSFT has a big eye toward backwards compatibility, allowing web forms and MVC in the same project.
Minor nitpick on your otherwise positive comment, we have been using ASP.NET MVC for almost ten years now (ok eight). Webforms have long been a thing of the past, at least in the circles most devs I know move in.