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