In the early days of the web, all we had is HTML, and that was fine for a while.

Then, we wanted something more “dynamic” or personal, so a bunch of sever side technologies were created (ISAPI, CGI, …) and then (in the Microsoft world) there was ASP, now sometimes referred to as “Classic ASP”. ASP was a mix of HTML and VBScript, later to be fondly named “spaghetti code” because of the intertwining of markup and code with a bunch of <% %> symbols and other variants.

When ASP.NET came out, one of its selling points was (apart from being based on a new framework – .NET) that you don’t need to know or write HTML – you have server controls, which do the actual rendering behind the scenes. Great!

Fast forward a few years…

Now, with ASP.NET MVC there is a new (preferred) view engine to use, named “Razor”, and one of its selling points is that you use plain HTML! No server side controls that render a bunch of unexpected HTML, ViewState and other nasties. Suddenly web developers like HTML, and want to use it as plainly as possible without server controls obscuring anything. And you can mix that HTML with code (now CSHTML). That code looks better, for sure… but hey – aren’t we back to the way classic ASP was written?

Maybe it’s just me, but this is irony if I ever saw one!