Ben Forta

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eWeek: Flex Well In The Lead

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eWeek (print edition) is running a story (which I can’t find online, although I did find a related video post) on JavaFX, and has a supporting story (which I also can’t find online) entitled RIA 1.1. It contains an O’Reilly based graph showing the results when they “asked 200 developers what RIA technology was next on their list to use”. 200 is a rather puny sampling, and I don’t understand the question (does “next on the list” mean “something you are not using now”?). Still the results are interesting:

  • Adobe Flex: 24.6%
  • Curl: 16.1%
  • Adobe AIR: 14.4%
  • iPhone SDK: 14.4%
  • Silverlight: 7.6%
  • Adobe Flash: 4.2%
  • JavaFX: 3.8%
  • Google Android: 3.8%
  • Ruby: 2.9%
  • AJAX: 2.9%
  • Google Gears: 1.7%
  • Other: 2.9%

Some of the numbers are odd, to say the least. But, based on this data …
Adobe Flex + Adobe AIR + Flash = kicking some serious butt

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5 responses to “eWeek: Flex Well In The Lead”

  1. dm Avatar
    dm

    Ben,
    200 is not puny for a study like this, if it is a representative random sample. Probably margin of error in the 3-5% range.
    What is odd, and causes one to question the credibility of this is that Curl is in the #2 position. Curl??! Don’t ring true. And AJAX is 10th? Also doesn’t ring true. Depends on how they defined "RIA" and how they asked the question.
    Hey, I miss the team. Hope all is well.
    -David

    Reply
  2. Tianzhen Lin Avatar
    Tianzhen Lin

    Even though I am a big backer of Flash, AIR etc, I am quite skeptical about the number and how they sample developers. I see AIR as 14.4%, vs. AJAX as 2.9%, this is definitely a wrong crowd to draw any conclusions upon. At least from most of the RIA developers I have known are some kind of AJAX developers to start with.

    Reply
  3. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    I find it funny that Curl is listed after Flex as I always thought that you curl first than flex.

    Reply
  4. David Avatar
    David

    I think the "next on the list" part could be a big part of this. AJAX has become much easier to implement recently, and it can be used selectively on a web site, where needed. Great to see these numbers though.
    Davo

    Reply
  5. Judah Avatar
    Judah

    I’m guessing that the "next on your list" was being interpreted by developers as something you’d like to investigate but haven’t gotten around to using. The upside of that would be that people are excited about trying out Flex and AIR. The downside would be that they aren’t actually using Flex and AIR currently.
    With Flash and Ajax being such small percentages in that response list, my intuition tells me that a lot of the respondents are currently developing Ajax and Flash apps and are thinking what they’ll try their hand at next.

    Reply

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