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MVC vs MVP vs MVVM — Who’s the Real MVP?
You’ve probably seen these acronyms flying around in architecture talks, framework docs, or job interviews: MVC, MVP, and MVVM. They’re not rival K-pop bands — they’re tried-and-tested design patterns that help you write clean, maintainable code by separating concerns between UI, data, and logic. So, if you’ve ever looked at a messy spaghetti codebase and thought "This could use some structure", welcome. Let’s untangle these patterns one by one, and see when and where each one fits. MVC – Model View Controller Imagine your app is a play. MVC is the classic trio: Model is the script. View is the stage. Controller is the director telling actors what to do when the audience reacts. Model This is where your data and business logic live. Think of it as the backend of your app’s brain — database interactions, validation rules, and calculations all go here. View The View is the dumb, pretty layer. It only knows how to show stuff — like buttons, charts, or loading spinners. No brain here, just glam. Controller When you click a button or submit a form, the Controller takes the input, processes it (usually via the Model), and decides what View to show next. It glues everything together. In Web Dev: Model = ORM / DB logic View = HTML / Templates Controller = Express.js, Django views, Rails controllers, etc. In Android: The Controller often ends up being the Activity or Fragment, which gets messy fast — leading to our next pattern. MVP – Model View Presenter MVP to the rescue. MVP evolved from MVC, mostly to make unit testing easier and decouple your UI logic from the Android lifecycle. Model Same as MVC — it's your data layer. View Still dumb, but now even more hands-off. It just exposes methods like showUserProfile() or displayError(). It doesn’t decide what to show — just how to render it. Presenter The real boss here. Presenter grabs user input from the View, talks to the Model, and pushes the right data back to the View. The beauty? View and Presenter talk via interfaces — so you can swap out the View during testing without breaking a sweat. In Android MVP: View = Activity/Fragment (dumbed down) Presenter = A testable class with no Android imports Model = Repo or data source classes
You’ve probably seen these acronyms flying around in architecture talks, framework docs, or job interviews: MVC, MVP, and MVVM.
They’re not rival K-pop bands — they’re tried-and-tested design patterns that help you write clean, maintainable code by separating concerns between UI, data, and logic.
So, if you’ve ever looked at a messy spaghetti codebase and thought "This could use some structure", welcome.
Let’s untangle these patterns one by one, and see when and where each one fits.
MVC – Model View Controller
Imagine your app is a play. MVC is the classic trio:
- Model is the script.
- View is the stage.
- Controller is the director telling actors what to do when the audience reacts.
Model
This is where your data and business logic live.
Think of it as the backend of your app’s brain — database interactions, validation rules, and calculations all go here.
View
The View is the dumb, pretty layer.
It only knows how to show stuff — like buttons, charts, or loading spinners. No brain here, just glam.
Controller
When you click a button or submit a form, the Controller takes the input, processes it (usually via the Model), and decides what View to show next.
It glues everything together.
In Web Dev:
- Model = ORM / DB logic
- View = HTML / Templates
- Controller = Express.js, Django views, Rails controllers, etc.
In Android:
- The Controller often ends up being the Activity or Fragment, which gets messy fast — leading to our next pattern.
MVP – Model View Presenter
MVP to the rescue.
MVP evolved from MVC, mostly to make unit testing easier and decouple your UI logic from the Android lifecycle.
Model
Same as MVC — it's your data layer.
View
Still dumb, but now even more hands-off.
It just exposes methods like showUserProfile() or displayError().
It doesn’t decide what to show — just how to render it.
Presenter
The real boss here.
Presenter grabs user input from the View, talks to the Model, and pushes the right data back to the View.
The beauty? View and Presenter talk via interfaces — so you can swap out the View during testing without breaking a sweat.
In Android MVP:
- View = Activity/Fragment (dumbed down)
- Presenter = A testable class with no Android imports
- Model = Repo or data source classes
