I'm a consultant and work across a number of accounts. Not sure what "fake statfull web" (assuming you meant state-full) means to you, but in one huge healthcare org and two medium-sized fin. services co's 4 new WebForms projects have started in the last 6 months. Smallest project is worth $1.2mm.

WebForms was meant to loosely mimic WinForms and provide an easy transition for VB developers from desktop to Web, and it was mostly successful. The fake statefullness OP's referring to is FormState and the attempts to make WebForms more like WinForms.

With the emergence of AJAX though most competent WebForms developers dumped it because of then overheads and used the framework more like Classic ASP while integrating AJAX.

To be fair, FormState problems could get pretty bad. By default, large apps would be posting back several hundred KB on each click (sometimes even in the low MB range). With AJAX, it was better, but still not in the acceptable range for non-intranet apps. There were always mechanisms by which competent developers could work around these problems, but for the most part, those would mean that you're fighting with the framework and not working in a particularly idiomatic, WebForms-y way.

In retrospect, I'm not surprised MVC gained popularity so quickly.

WebForms was a beast and a horrible web technology for the web. I was just stating that, since MS intent on killing VB, it was intended to make transition from Enterprise VB Desktop apps to Enterprise Web Apps easier and in that regard it was successful.

The issues with FormState made it mostly unusable over the internet, it was relegated to intranet applications for the most part.

>state-full

You meant stateful, right? I mean if we're being pedantic it's good to actually be correct.

Something that has success is successful, and when you're having trouble sleeping you might say you're feeling wakeful. Why then would it be state-full?

I think it's different in Europe (where you appear to be located), but at least in the States Webforms are huge amongst the Fortune 500 and healthcare industries.

It's pretty awful in about any regard in my experience. What would be the reason to use it over MVC?

Isn't using WebForms faster for implementing intranet apps? Drag and drop stuff, done.

It can be for simple stuff. It can also be a huge pain in the ass and it took a while before it was truly JavaScript and AJAX friendly.

WebForms are still actively developed and supported by Microsoft. The latest version is very good and the WebForms paradigm is incredibly productive for general business-line apps. You can build entire apps within hours or days that would take months otherwise with separate frameworks.

If you have a massive complex webapp then you should use MVC, or look at a separate frontend JS talking to a backend API, but WebForms serves its niche very well.

WebForms is only good for the simplest of LOB apps. Yes it is still supported, but many organizations are discouraging its use in new applications due to difficulties in scaling and long-term maintenance. In my company, all new projects are required to use MVC.

WebForms' selling point is that it is easy to bootstrap, but its limitations quickly become a liability in an enterprise setting, where small apps rarely stay small. Once you decide you need to extend your app and/or integrate with newer non-MS web technologies, you are backed into a corner.

WebForms is something that really ought to have been deprecated, but people are still clinging onto it because it's so easy to use and there are too many legacy apps that still depend on it.

I suspect it's the kind of Stockholm Syndrome that have kept Mongo users faithful over the years. At the back of your head you know you're going to have to pay down the technical debt later, but you can't resist because it's so easy to get started and to see results.

(though to be fair, Mongo 3.4 onwards has overcome some of the serious flaws of earlier versions)