A colleague forwarded a link with Bruce Eckel on "Hybridizing Java" on artima; the article makes some points on some of the mistakes that have hamstringed clientside Java, and makes a case for why Adobe Flex is worth investing time in for your clientside needs. It also mentions why you might find Adobe's Apollo runtime on your desktop soon (this is technology I can't wait to get my hands on.)
When Bruce Tate started writing about ruby and erlang and all the dynamic|functional languages out there, and why J2EE is a mess (cutting out the overtones) it made a few good men listen. It also showed that frameworks like RIFE were doing some good things, by giving developers a light, productive programming model for creating enterprise applications, and innovating in ways like making continuations available in Java, which I think a lot of people are going to start talking about a lot this year.
As goes the serverside, so I hope goes the clientside; I am happy the "Thinking in X" man is evangelizing Flex. I took a trip in the wayback machine to 2003, when I was preaching the "marry flash and java" message, even if the technology was crude then. 4 or so years down the line, the technology is mature enough and way ahead of anything else for rendering your clientside on the web, and as mentioned earlier, what it does for the web, it promises for your desktop too. I hope the Flex vs Ajax debate will just die. When the Bruces talk people listen, and I hope a lot more developers jump on board this clientside technology.
I was thinking the other day; rather than developers spend time on a GNU/Flash player, why not spend sometime on getting a free/open source alternative to Flex Data Services (FDS)? For me, the utility of a free/open source player does not match having something like FDS for gratis for now, especially, since Linux players are first class citizens from here on, as Bruce also mentions. I am going to spend some time on this one.
And, I am looking forward to the Thinking in Flex book :)
cheers,
-- eokyere :)
Links:
Hybridizing Java - http://tinyurl.com/3czhzc
Flex Data Services - http://tinyurl.com/qd8mg
Flash Speaks Java - http://tinyurl.com/2ov6ls
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
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