This book is no place for a history lesson; suffice it to say that when MVC was first conceived in the 1970s, the world was a far simpler place. What computers could do—and by extension, the software that ran on them—was relatively limited. Yet the war against complexity was already being waged. MVC emerged as a major weapon in the arsenal because it targeted a simple but deadly problem at the heart of nearly all programs that present an interface to the user and let them manipulate data.

To appreciate the elegance of the solution that MVC offers, you must fully grasp the nature of the problem. That requires generalization; stepping back from the myriad details of your application’s moving parts and seeing it in a much simpler form. Despite all that has changed in the 20+ years since MVC was first described, the basic problem it solves remains as prevalent as ever.