Adobe Flex & Adobe AIR

[cmgmyr]

So have you guys heard of these? Used them? Plan to?

 

I've been following both of these for quite a while now and it just seems like the latest releases are very stable and ready to go for heavy development. I made a little app over the weekend and it wasn't too bad to construct. It was pretty much a small search outputted to a data grid. It came out to about 65 lines of code (just the flex)...the same thing in PHP would have been around 200 or so (or more easily).

 

It looks like both of these will be very helpful for future development. What are your thoughts???

[cmgmyr]

None of you guys have comments???

[neylitalo]

My initial knee-jerk reaction is, as usual, as follows:

 

It's proprietary. That means I will have to pay to use it - maybe more than once, even. Deployment will be limited to a handful of platforms, and only the ones with the right software installed.

 

A proprietary system usually has one advantage: There is a team of people getting paid to develop the software. This insures constant development. (For the most part. No need to split hairs, though.) However, this may also be a disadvantage. This means that if you have requests, bug reports, or anything else, there is a small group of people that have the authority (and ability) to fix it.

 

A proprietary system also has the distinct pleasure of being difficult to write third-party extensions for. Unless the developers write and publish an API (which may very well be the case, but I don't know), third-party developers are out in the cold. That means that you're stuck with whatever the original developers choose to give you - you don't even have a chance at using somebody else's new and awesome functionality.

 

And I realize that Adobe may have broken the mold; they may have ignored all of their previously established business practices. All of my arguments may have been nullified by a decision on Adobe's part to solve all of these problems - but I doubt it.