Comment by UltraViolence

WebForms was a complete disaster, made solely to allow Microsoft salesmen to quickly slap together a demo.

The problems started when you wanted to put together a REAL application. Because the entire paradigm of a web application programmed like a desktop application was flawed it resulted into an endless stream of headaches and workarounds, with bloated, complex and slow applications as a result.

In that sense ASP.NET MVC was a breath of fresh air.