Welcome!

Adobe Flex Authors: Liz McMillan, RealWire News Distribution, Maureen O'Gara, Yakov Fain, Keith Swenson

Related Topics: Java, Open Source, Eclipse, FlexSeminar.com

Java: Article

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
By Yakov Fain
Article Rating:
May 18, 2006 12:30 PM EDT
Reads:
 37,634
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:    

Published May 18, 2006 – Reads 37,634
Copyright © 2006 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By 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.

Comments (5) View Comments

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.

Most Recent Comments
YS Wong 06/26/06 10:08:01 PM EDT

not possible!
JabbyPanda 05/19/06 05:44:10 AM EDT

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.
SYS-CON Italy News Desk 05/18/06 12:28:35 PM EDT

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.
SYS-CON India News Desk 05/18/06 12:00:54 PM EDT

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.
JDJ News Desk 05/18/06 11:15:34 AM EDT

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.