DLG Software

Why Flex?

I've loved application development since I lucked into it at the start of my programming career. My first applications were MVS ISPF/PDF user interfaces to SAS data and reporting programs. Then SAS 6.03 was released and it included a new product, SAS Application Facility, or SAS/AF. This was SAS's first real application development tool, and it became my primary development environment for the next twenty years.

SAS/AF was a great product, truly cross-platform long before Java came along (I've developed AF apps in Windows, MVS, VMS, various flavors of Unix). But AF was never web-enabled. SAS does now have products like SAS/IntrNet (a bit like a SAS-aware PHP) and App/Dev Studio (Java-based) but these products never really delivered the functionality of desktop apps over the web. I used them, and in the course of this learned a lot of DHTML/XML/Javascript/etc., but it always seemed like a kludge and a compromise.

What I really wanted was the ability to create tightly integrated, feature-rich, highly interactive apps that ran over the internet in a web browser.

Then I saw my first Ajax-enabled apps. Finally, it seemed that web-based apps could approach the features and functionality of a desktop app.

Then I saw Flex and discovered the world of Rich Internet Applications.

As soon as I downloaded the Flex3 trial version and began exploring I liked what I saw. Feature rich, easy to use, remarkably few bugs, and since Flex leverages the ubiquitous Flash player as a virtual machine it provides a rich, consistent feature set and look-and-feel across disparate operating systems (the unfullfilled promise of Java). All in all, a web application developer's dream.

Over the past five months I've immersed myself in Flex, deciding to make a change from SAS development (though I may yet try to link the two - currently there is little RIA development in the SAS world). I chose Flex because it is, in my opinion, the best RIA product currently available (though I certainly will look at MS Silverlight once it matures). In any case, I'm returning to the app dev world after a brief hiatus (I took two years off to write fiction, two bad novels - see the A bit about me link for more info) and my future app dev work will hopefully be Flex-based but in any case will be RIA-based.