Okay, I watched the first Visual Web Developer (VWD)
video. Questions for anyone out of the first grade
with this stuff; four questions:

(1) I'm building a Web site where the server side
code is in Visual Basic .NET with use of classes
from the .NET Framework and also from ASP.NET and
ADO.NET, but as far as I know I'm not using the
'framework' of 'model, view, controller' (MVC) and,
so far, see no such need. What's the big deal of
MVC?

That is, the code for one of my Web pages has
standard, 'reserved named', ASP.NET 'event handlers'

Sub Page_Init
Sub Page_Load
Sub Page_PreRender
Sub Page_Unload

So, when I need to do something, say, with SQL
Server database or communicate with a server in my
'server farm', e.g., my session state server and two
more I have, I just write a function in the code of
the Web page and call it from an appropriate one of
those standard ASP.NET event handlers.

Question 1: I see nothing wrong with this approach
to 'code organization' and, thus, am missing the
big deal of MVC. What the heck am I missing about
the value of MVC?

(2) [Long question] What am I missing on The video
explained how the VWD 'integrated development
environment' (IDE) is easier to use as something to
type into than Microsoft's Notepad. It's also
easier to use than a sharp stick on a wet clay
tablet!

But I don't type into Notepad and, instead, use my
favorite programmable editor I've used for
essentially all my typing for some decades, KEdit.
That editor is a PC version of IBM's mainframe
editor XEDIT, and the macro language is Mike
Cowlishaw's elegant Rexx.

From all I can see writing code, KEdit looks much
better than Visual Studio, especially since my
project 'folder' is really simple and easy to
understand and since I get to write macros to
automate some work whenever helpful. The times I
looked at all the files Visual Studio creates for a
'project'; they were a lot to understand; I didn't
understand them; and I fear that in case there were
problems I would have to understand them. Bummer.

E.g., here's a variable: What is its type, that is,
where is its Visual Basic (VB) Dim statement, and
what is the scope of the variable, i.g., where the
heck was it declared? Where else have I used this
variable?

My guess would be that any good, programmable editor
could be as powerful as KEdit or better -- Emacs
anyone?

E.g., some of my comments are really 'code section
delimiters' recognized by some of my KEdit macros
and, this way, I can get some easy views of the
overall organization of my code, e.g., for scope of
names.

E.g., my most recent nice KEdit macro is BEIDC for
'begin, end insert dated comment'. So, I get, say

' BEGIN Modified at 11:31:29 on Monday, February 17th, 2014.
' END Modified at 11:31:29 on Monday, February 17th, 2014.

and then type code and comments between these two.
Another macro lets me see all lines with, say, the
fourth token on one of those two lines, and that
operation is sufficient for me, given one of those
two comments, to move to just where the other one
is.

And I have macros that make use of KEdit's 'point'
facility that lets me give names to 'pointers' to
particular lines. One macros shows me all such
'pointers' and saves them to a file for loading,
say, the next day. So, with these pointers, I can
jump around in a file quickly. So, maybe the code I
am writing needs to draw from three other places in
my file; so have four such 'line pointers'. Works
well, and a dozen more lines of macro code can make
it work better.

For 'Intellisense', from all I can see and saw in
the VWD video, no thanks: For the classes in the
.NET Framework, there are some thousands, my guess,
20,000+, Web pages of documentation at Microsoft's
MSDN Web site. So, before I use a .NET class I
download the relevant Web pages of documentation
from MSDN and, for each such Web page, make a little
abstract. I put the abstract in one of four simple
text files (one file for each of Windows, VB,
TCP/IP, etc., and SQL Server) I maintain with KEdit.
Currently I have 5000+ such Web pages and abstracts
and can find relevant documentation quickly just by
using the KEdit search tools on the text files with
the abstracts -- each abstract has both the URL of
the Web page at MSDN and also the tree name of the
Web page on my hard disk.

In my code, for crucial such Web pages, I put a VB
comment with the title of the Web page and the tree
name on my hard disk of my downloaded copy of the
Web page. Then in my editor, one keystroke displays
the Web page. So, if I want to check something in
the documentation, it's one or a few keystrokes in
my editor, and, then, I get the relevant Web page
with essentially the most detailed documentation
Microsoft has. Also relevant is my earlier code
with tested uses of that .NET class; the way my work
is organized makes it easy for me to find such code.
Of course, I also have files of notes, old programs,
and old test programs and can also have the
corresponding tree names in my comments. I'm not
getting just why, net, in practice, 'Intellisense'
is better or as good.

My code is just awash in comments at various levels,
much like writing a technical paper: For me, when I
return to some code six months later, those comments
are a great advantage. But writing those comments
makes good usage of the power of KEdit, my macros,
and even my usual spell checker -- with Visual
Studio Web Developer I'd miss such functionality.

I do not like the way Visual Studio uses the screen
and makes use of many small windows. Instead, I
just use the window management facilities of
Windows. Typically I have a dozen+ windows on my
screen, and I keep them organized partly with some
code triggered by one icon in the UL corner of the
screen; then all the windows maintain their Z-order
but are arranged so that the UL corner of each
window is equally spaced on a line from the top
center or so of the screen to the left center. Then
at least a little of each window is visible, and I
can see all of any window easily from just a slight
change in the Z-order without moving any of the
windows.

Net, the video made Visual Web Developer look like
a big step down from just my usage of a good
text editor.

Question 2: What am I missing on why VWD and
Intellisense are better than what I'm already doing?

(3) Hearing the title Visual Web Developer, I
guessed that the software was a way to position
'controls' on a screen, set values for relevant HTML
and CSS attributes, e.g., fonts, colors, borders,
and then have the ASP.NET code for those controls
written automatically or some such.

As it is, if I have a complicated Web page to lay
out, 'design', then I use, say, Microsoft's
PhotoDraw to decide what the page should look like.

Question 3: Are there better tools for designing
Web pages than just something like PhotoDraw? What
are they? Are there tools that would take such a
graphical design and generate the corresponding
ASP.NET class instances and class method
invocations? What are such tools? Are they
actually helpful, worthwhile?

(4) The VWD video was writing JavaScript to generate
a text box. Curious. What's the point here? While
Microsoft's ASP.NET has written some JavaScript for
me, so far I have yet to write a single line of it
and see no need to.

My guess is that the JavaScript, running in the
client's browser, adds the text box to the 'document
object model' (DOM) at the client.

Question 4: Is this so? Or is the point that the
JavaScript code actually runs on the server and
generates the HTML and CSS 'mark up' on the server
and does not send that JavaScript code to the
client?