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ASP.NET MVC vs Play Framework

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When comparing ASP.NET MVC vs Play Framework, the Slant community recommends Play Framework for most people. In the question“What are the best backend web frameworks?” Play Framework is ranked 13th while ASP.NET MVC is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Play Framework is:

It's like Java, but more Haskell-y.

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best backend web frameworks?

Pros

Pro
Mature

The framework has many build-in tools, and many packages have been written targeting the framework.

Pro
Cross platform

.Net Core can work on any platform.

Pro
Widely used

It's pretty easy to find a job with it and there's plenty of documentation and tutorials around.

Pro
Extensive documentation

There are a lot of resources available to get help.

Pro
Fast

Asp.NET Core on Linux is fast accordingly to TechEmpower benchmarks.

Pro
Asp.NET core provides balance between magic/agility and craftsmanship

You can get ordinary details quickly but with complete freedom to make your craft, knowing everything that is happening underneath the cloths. The highly modular system makes it possible to scale small applications to large ones with ease.

Pro
It has more users than any other backend web framework

Getting your next contract is easy with this on your CV.

Pro
Scala

It's like Java, but more Haskell-y.

Pro
Asynchronous Core

Pro
Interoperable with Java

Pro
Fast

Pro
Good documentation and a great community

Play has quite a large community which provides numerous tutorials and videos related to developing with Play.
The Play official documentation covers many things, such as the framework itself but also specific stuff such as Akka, SBT and Netty.

There are also many big companies that base their main sites around Play, one of them is LinkedIn which provides third-party documentation on a regular basis.

Pro
Play is an extensive ecosystem

Play uses Akka for concurrency, Scala for a templating engine, Netty as a client-server framework and SBT (Simple Build Tool) for building. And they all come out of the box.
Play also comes with the option to scaffold your applications. Play is an all-embracing ecosystem designed to increase developer productivity and shorten development times.

Pro
Simple for beginners

Play is very simple to get started. The documentation is very helpful for beginners and advanced users alike and the official website has a great "Getting Started" tutorial to begin developing with Play.

Pro
Readable code

Play framework's convention over configuration methodology makes most Play projects have a very similar structure. This means that the code written for the framework is very readable. This enables a developer to switch between applications without having to relearn the ecosystem for every project. The built-in templating system also helps with code and makes it possible to have a very low count of lines of code.

Pro
Can use Java, one of the most widely known languages

Java is one of the most widely known languages, so people coming from that background can jump right in and not have to learn a new language syntax.

Pro
Good Websocket Support

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Cons

Con
Core and full ASP.NET are bit confusing sometimes

While not in feature parity (yet) they are still apart and support sometimes funky combinations of features - full ASP.NET has all the bells and whistles but doesn't offer cross platform so you may have to do some research what you really need. That being said, it got a lot better in 2.0.

Con
Expensive

You need to have the plate to maintain a site.

Con
Backward incompatibility

The jump from Play 1 to Play 2.x caused a lot of confusion. While it is important to have some kind of evolution, sometimes it causes backward incompatibility which can create some problems. It makes tutorials or modules made for the old version obsolete. This can make it hard for beginners to find useful resources. The template engine which used Groovy now uses Scala.