JavaOne 2006: How Adobe Can Attract Java Developers to Flex 2

To attract five million Java developers, they should offer Eclipse-based Flex Builder IDE for free

May. 18, 2006 12:30 PM

JavaOne 2006: How Adobe Can Attract Java Developers to Flex 2

Flex 2 is a good technology for development of rich Internet applications, and Adobe is already making some serious changes in the pricing policy to bring Flex 2 to masses. But to make it attractive to five million of professional Java developers they should offer Eclipse-based Flex Builder IDE for free. Java developers enjoy a variety of excellent free Java IDE such as Eclipse, NetBeans and JDeveloper. Expensive IDEs like JBuilder or RAD are only used by some filthy rich corporations. An excellent IntellijIDEA IDE is not expensive, but it has very modest market share: Java developers are spoiled by good open source products.

Each time I talk to Java developers about Flex 2, the first question they ask, “Is it free?” I answer that even without IDE you can use a plain text editor for writing code, and can create and run a small community-grade Web site for free using Flex command line compilers, Flex framework components and Flex Data Services on a single processor server... For existing Flex 1.5 developers Flex Builder environment is a big improvement , but Java developers have seen it all and will think twice before reaching for their wallets.

I'm not in the position of giving Adobe advice, it's just a voice from the trenches.

posted Thursday, 18 May 2006
tags: ria adobe flex 2

Published May. 18, 2006— Reads 37,549 — Feedback 5
Copyright © 2006 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

About Yakov Fain
Yakov Fain is a Managing Director of Farata Systems, consulting, training and product company. He has authored several Java books, dozens of technical articles. SYS-CON Books released his latest co-authored book , Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java: Secrets of the Masters in Spring 2007. Sun Microsystems has nominated and awarded Yakov with the title Java Champion. He leads the Princeton Java Users Group. He is an Adobe Certified Flex Instructor. Currently Yakov works on the book for O'Reilly "Enterprise Application Development with Flex". He twits at twitter.com/yfain.

Your Feedback

JavaOne 2006: How Adobe Can Attract Java Developers to Flex 2

YS Wong wrote: not possible!

read more & respond »

JavaOne 2006: How Adobe Can Attract Java Developers to Flex 2

JabbyPanda wrote: We are already using FDT commercial plugin to Eclipse to facilitate development in Action Script 2 for Flex 1.5. FDT is currently priced significantly cheaper then Flex Builder 2. Thus, may be the community will develop an IDE for Flex 2, which be have a nice set of features comparable with Flex Builder 2.

read more & respond »

JavaOne 2006: How Adobe Can Attract Java Developers to Flex 2

SYS-CON Italy News Desk wrote: Flex 2 is a good technology for development of rich Internet applications, and Adobe is already making some serious changes in the pricing policy to bring Flex 2 to masses. But to make it attractive to five million of professional Java developers they should offer Eclipse-based Flex Builder IDE for free.

read more & respond »

JavaOne 2006: How Adobe Can Attract Java Developers to Flex 2

SYS-CON India News Desk wrote: Flex 2 is a good technology for development of rich Internet applications, and Adobe is already making some serious changes in the pricing policy to bring Flex 2 to masses. But to make it attractive to five million of professional Java developers they should offer Eclipse-based Flex Builder IDE for free.

read more & respond »

JavaOne 2006: How Adobe Can Attract Java Developers to Flex 2

JDJ News Desk wrote: Flex 2 is a good technology for development of rich Internet applications, and Adobe is already making some serious changes in the pricing policy to bring Flex 2 to masses. But to make it attractive to five million of professional Java developers they should offer Eclipse-based Flex Builder IDE for free.

read more & respond »

Latest Cloud Developer Stories

GoGrid & GigaSpaces Join Forces

By Michael Sheehan

GigaSpaces and GoGrid have been strategic partners for quite a while. This week, we jointly announced a new technology partnership aimed at offering Java and .NET as a PaaS solution. To further explain our combined solution, there is a webinar slotted for October 14th where Guy N...

f5 Networks and GoGrid Share Their News

By Michael Sheehan

I had the pleasure of not only attending the Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, CA this week, staffing the booth and generally enjoying talking to a wide range of developers, technologists, vendors, partners and others, but I also was able to do a couple of interviews with Pete...

ISO Forms Group for Cloud Computing Standards

By Reuven Cohen

Big news on the Cloud Standards front, I was just informed that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) - JTC 1 have formed a new Subcommittee (SC) at their Plenary last week that includes...

Eucalyptus’ Cloud Platform Hits First Update

By Maureen O'Gara

The new widgetry features multi-cluster support and enhanced concurrency management to improve scaling so users can seamlessly overlay their Eucalyptus cloud on top of virtually any existing IT infrastructure, regardless of size or configuration. Eucalyptus is meant for implement...

Yahoo Open Sources Traffic Server Code

By Maureen O'Gara

It says Traffic Server enables the session management, authentication, configuration management, load balancing and routing of an entire cloud computing stack. It’s supposed to offer fast, reliable and scalable access to cached online content and speed responses to requests for s...