A very Drake explanation of MVC and ‘Controlla’

Sho Miyata
Jul 20, 2017 · 3 min read

What is Drake’s favorite framework in programming? The MVC (Model-View-Controller). Not convinced? Listen to Controlla, the song dedicated to the C in MVC. On his album Views, the V in MVC.

Anyways, let’s start our story.

One day, Drake meets a model. They start spending time together, and these hangouts culminate in him expressing to her that he likes her, and that she should like him too. He’s famous so he’s a little condescending about it. Almost control-ling.

Drake has a lot of feelings. A whole database of feelings. The model takes some of those feelings, manipulates them based on what Drake has expressed to her, and sends them back his way.

With this newfound romance in hand, Drake now has a lot of raw material to embellish, and turn into an album. What he includes or omits on this album is really up to him — he can’t tell the public exactly what has gone down, as he may lose some street cred. He decides to name his album Views.

As Drake fans, we’re very interested in Drake’s love life. But unfortunately, we’ll only be able to see or hear about his love life through his album, Views. We don’t get to see what has really gone down behind the scenes.

(Credit: ME!)

Don’t worry if you still don’t understand the MVC framework, I’ll be the first to admit that this wasn’t the clearest analogy. Let’s quickly walk through how the MVC works, in non-Drake terms.

  1. A user flips open a web app and interacts with it, sending out a couple user commands in the process (like logging in or searching for something).
  2. The controller receives these commands, and sends out instructions to the model. The model grabs the required data to fulfill those instructions from the database, manipulates the data, and sends them back to the controller.
  3. The controller then takes this data that the model has manipulated, and sends instructions to views on what should be seen by the user alongside the data.
  4. The user only sees and interacts with the view.

The controller stands between the model and the view, and instructs them on what they should be doing. The model is the brains of the entire operation, as it actually manipulates the data. Lastly, the view is the visual representation which the user actually sees.

We can see here that the controlla is arguably the most pivotal (or at least the most interesting) part of this operation, so let’s let Drake explain the controlla in his own words:

[Hook: Drake]
“I think I’d lie for you
I think I’d die for you
Jodeci “Cry for You”
Do things when you want me to
Like controlla, controlla, yeah
Like controlla, controlla, yeah”

As a web app developer, the controlla will do things for you exactly when you want it to, exactly in the way you want it to. Like controlla, yeah.

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