---
title: Looking at the world through MVC glasses
teaser: 'The Model-View-Controller framework is a great way to architect an app.

  '
tags: web,rails
author: Chad Pytel
published_on: 2005-11-13
---

Once you go <abbr title="Model View Controller">MVC</abbr>, you never go back.
Properly using an <abbr title="Model View Controller">MVC</abbr> framework,
particularly with web-based programming, completely alters you ability to look
at your old programs the same way again.

Now that I've graduated to a world where new development takes place in
Java/Struts or Ruby on Rails, going back to the old Perl or <abbr title="PHP:
HyperText Preprocessor">PHP</abbr> program is a nightmare.

This is not just because out of the box Perl and <abbr title="PHP: HyperText
Preprocessor">PHP</abbr> don't provide any structure to web programming. It is
also because doing things in a very structured way changes how you think about
program flow.

Needless to say, everyone here at thoughtbot, myself included, has to
continually stop ourselves (and each other) from rewriting each of our old
programs from scratch every time we go back to do some maintenance.