title: Is MVVM killing silverlight development?
body: <p>This is a question I have had rattling around in my head for some time. I had a chat with a guy the other night who told me he would not be using the navigational framework because he could not figure out how it works with MVVM. As much as I tried to explain that patterns should be taken with a pinch of salt he would not listen.</p>
  
  <p>My point is this, patterns are great when they solve some problem. Sometimes only part of the pattern solves a particular problem while the other parts of it cause different problems. The goal of any developer is to build a solid application using a combination of patterns know how and foresight.</p>
  
  <p>I feel MVVM is becoming the one pattern to rule them all. As it is not directly supported by .Net some fancy business is needed to make it work. I feel that people are missing the point of the pattern, which is loosely coupled, testable code and instead jumping through hoops and missing out on great experiences trying to follow MVVM to the letter.</p>
  
  <p>MVVM is great but I wish it came with a warning or disclaimer for newbies as my fear is people will shy away from silverlight development for fear of being smacked with the mvvm stick.   </p>
  
  <p>EDIT:
  Can I just add as an edit, I use and agree with MVVM as a pattern I know when it is and isn't feasible in my projects. My issue is with the encompassing nature it is taking, as if it HAS to be used as part of development. It is being used as an integral feature and not a pattern, which it is.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT 2: Thanks for all the comments so far, one issue that is surfacing from this is something I have not thought about until now. Is the introduction of richer more advanced frameworks for GUI/RIA development showing a weakness in RAD development for this generation. That is, is there a lack of code design and pattern knowledge being taught along with these frameworks? I once asked for a book on just C# (Before Pro C# &amp; the .Net framework was popular) and was told why would I want to know C# minus winforms/asp.</p>
  
  <p>Sure there are plenty of books/KB on these subjects but are people using them, beyond the superstars and very good programmers?</p>