[SideburnsOfDoom]

> I think the whole (webforms) toolset is basically trying to lure / accommodate the old Win Forms developer to switch to the web

Correct, that was the driver behind webforms. Don't forget that the first version of ASP came out in 1996. Bill Gates' "Internet Tidal Wave" memo was in May 1995.

At the time, Microsoft wanted a way to VB programmers onto the web, and still using familiar, easy tools. And staying inside the Microsoft mothership, of course. ASP grew into ASP.NET Webforms. (.Net 1.0 launched in 2002)

If one was familiar with VB or .Net and winforms, ASP and webforms wasn't too much of a leap. But the abstraction was slow and leaky to work with, and the rendered html contained huge hidden state fields and other oddities. So a new generation of devs who grew up with the web generally greeted it with "WTF!". That's where ASP MVC comes in.

IMHO the wheel has turned far since then; On windows 8, JavaScript is a language for developing desktop apps, so that web developers can try their hand at desktop - the reverse of the situation that Webforms set out to address.