DLG Software

About a year ago a programmer friend of mine gave me a Flex3 demo, and as soon as I saw Flex I was hooked. This was an about-face for me — previously I'd never much liked web apps, certainly not those based on plain HTML. After many years of developing desktop apps I found HTML-based apps too restrictive: limited functionality, unsatisfying user experience, and generally not fun to develop.

Mind you, I liked the idea of an access-from-anywhere app with a centralized codebase. But back then there were better options — I already had experience developing apps deployed via Citrix or delivered to the client via Exceed and X Windows, both offering a better user experience and more functionality than early web apps.

Still, it was obvious that browser-based apps were a great idea, and it was just a question of when they would mature into something usable.

"When" almost arrived for me with Ajax. Ajax was clearly a big step forward, though far from perfect. But the timing was off — around the time I was first aware of Ajax I was already heading into a two year sabattical of writing fiction (see My background for more on that little adventure). In the end the delay was for the best, because now as I return to the appdev world RIAs like Flex have matured into serious browser-based app development environments.

As I mentioned above, when I first encountered Flex it was a revelation. And when I downloaded the trial version and began playing with it I just kept liking it more and more: Flex could create browser-based apps with incredible, seamless functionality and a great UX; AS3 was object-oriented and mostly made sense, as did MXML; it was open source with a large community of generous developers freely sharing code (Flexlib is a great example); it had a sibling, AIR, for creation of desktop apps with almost the same codebase as a Flex app; it had a solid market share; and it was fast and fun to work with.

So, after a quick look at other RIA options (Silverlight, version 2 at the time, was still a bit too rough, and JavaFX was even worse) I took the Flex plunge. I still have a lot to learn, of course, but then that's always the case for app developers — our world is always a moving target. For example, I haven't yet made the move to Flex4. Well, just more fun stuff to look forward to...