Comment by gf000
11 days ago
Is the Controller not in a coupled pair with a View? We could imagine an interface where it could be completely separate (e.g. a kiosk TUI where stuff like "press 'r' for X" is displayed), but in the vast majority of UIs the View has state, and the Controller has to depend on that state (e.g. did this keypress happen with a text field focused). Sure, this is abstracted away via the UI framework and we operate on usually some form of event system.
But even then, I don't really see how we could have a non-coupled controller-view. In fact, I seem to remember that it was described in a similar way for Smalltalk even.
You can have decoupled Controllers from Views using React. That's the basis of the "original" Flux/Redux architecture used by React developers 10+ years ago when React was just beginning to get traction.
A flux/redux "Store" acts as a Model -> contains all the global state and exactly decides what gets rendered. A flux/redux "Dispatcher" acts as a Controller. And React "Components" (views) get their props from the "Store" and send "events" to "dispatcher", which in turn modifies the "Store" and forces a redraw.
Of course they aren't "entirely decoupled" because the view still has to call the controller functions, but the same controller action can be called from multiple views, and you can still design the architecture from Model, through Controller (which properties can change under what conditions) and then design the Views (where the interactions can happen).
I was asking more in the abstract. Web UI frameworks usually sit on top of considerable abstraction (in the form of the DOM, eventing system, etc), so I'm not sure your reply exactly answers my question.