>You mentioned Silverlight and Flex. They may be advertised as Web
technologies, but they look more like traditional desktop technologies to
me.
That's an important observation. I think there are a couple criteria for
the way "the next big thing" will be successful:
1) Easy to deploy on existing infrastructure (both Internet and intranet)
2) Popularity (unfortunately)
Commenting on #1:
What makes things easy to deliver these days seems to be anything that can
be sent from a server to the desktop via browser. Silverlight, Flex and
JavaFX all have the power to deliver through the browser both the initial
framework and subsequent business applications (compiled or what not -
i.e. swf files for Flex). But the uptake of any of those will be
dependent on popularity which takes us to point #2
Commenting on #2:
Popularity seems to be king these days regardless of whether a technology
deserves it. For example, just because Flash already exists on 90%+ of
all PC's out there it will be able to get a solid share of Flex apps to be
successful (even though there may be an xyz technology out there that is
way better). Silverlight will only be as good as whether Microsoft
recognizes that the world is no longer made of Windows desktops and that
Mac is catching up (and Linux a little too).
I mention JavaFX whenever I bring up Silverlight and Flex but I have yet
to see a real good example. Seems like it is escaping me or something
whenever I try to research it. I get the feeling that it is going to be
slow and bloated (like the 3D desktop from Sun that I tried to run awhile
back that nearly brought my quadcore 4GB PC to it's mercy).
On my TODO list I have an intention to dig into the TN5250 and TN5250J
projects to see how they evaluate the 5250 stream and eventually render it
to the client. In reality the 5250 data stream works for a majority of my
needs, I just need better UI widgets so I can "sell" it to the people I am
building web apps for. I just want to process "records" in and "records"
out, and wait for user interaction (i.e. events). I think this is what
the EGL team is attempting to accomplish, but the mess of open spec
technologies is introduced and the lack of OS400 integration is also a
downer (i.e. job control vs. everything running in a JVM).
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
Nathan Andelin wrote:
From: Aaron Bartell
My question is this: When will we ever reach the point of
being business developers again vs. ... techgeek ...
I've flip-flopped back and forth quite a bit during the past 8 years. Who knows when the dust will settle? Right now I'm pleased to be doing more application development than "tool" or "interface" development.
Meanwhile, the tug and pull between traditional desktop applications on one hand, green-screens on the other, and a whole lot of Web technologies in the middle, keeps the dust from settling.
You mentioned Silverlight and Flex. They may be advertised as Web technologies, but they look more like traditional desktop technologies to me.
Nathan.
midrange.com
