I completely agree with the MVC thing. It always felt forced and unnatural for page-based web applications, so it was disconcerting to see controllers getting railed on as inappropriate to single-page apps because they were dragged down to the client from the server world.
However, while I think the incorrect history should be ripped out of the book (if for no other reason than there are people who will write off the book because of the inaccuracy), I've always felt that the controller part of MVC wasn't defined explicitly so much as surveyed to see what was left after the model and view, so I'm ok with the book not liking it.
It has surprised me for many years that we haven't found an architecture better than MVC for apps, because I've never been comfortable with any controller code in any app I've worked on.
However, while I think the incorrect history should be ripped out of the book (if for no other reason than there are people who will write off the book because of the inaccuracy), I've always felt that the controller part of MVC wasn't defined explicitly so much as surveyed to see what was left after the model and view, so I'm ok with the book not liking it.
It has surprised me for many years that we haven't found an architecture better than MVC for apps, because I've never been comfortable with any controller code in any app I've worked on.