Which is why I said can, rather than should. I can't make that decision for him.
I can write you an application in any language you want which will max your CPU, and eat up all your available memory. So how is that any different? Yes Adobe are producing a better version of the runtime, but that's falling out of general improvements to allow the Flash Player to run on mobile devices, rather than any acceptance that the AIR runtime is slow / expensive. Flash / AIR are where Java was 10-12 years ago. It's easy to write a memory hogging, CPU burning app very easily, and harder to write a good one. Remember all those Java applets which maxed your CPU because they were spawning a ridiculous amount of threads? Check out this link on Firefox and watch your CPU usage, no Flash in sight http://www.ehiprimarycare.com/news/5322/dh_endorses_first_video_game There are performance tips for reducing CPU usage in AIR which a well designed application should follow http://blogs.adobe.com/air/2009/05/performance_tips_for_adobe_air.html as well as more general tips for writing applications (link is for the iPhone experience but is still useful, runtime is optimized for Bitmaps, so use them over PNGs, etc) http://coderhump.com/archives/517 Yes the runtime should be as frugal as possible when it comes to grabbing resources, but writing a crappy app and then blaming problems on the runtime is just trying to absolve blame. I guarantee if someone has written an app which abuses the runtime now, AIR 2 / FP 10.1 isn't going to be their savior. Personal experience... We have an AIR application with almost 400k LOC spread over 30+ modules. It doesn't take more memory than we are comfortable with, and doesn't burn through the CPU unnecessarily. We would quite like it to be a bit quicker, but hopefully the runtime improvements will sort that for us ;) We've had memory problems in the past, managing to crash the runtime repeatedly, but these were always traced back to poorly performing code rather than runtime issues. What I will say is that currently, the runtime makes writing a well behaved app very difficult indeed. The required level of understanding of the internals of the runtime, and how AS3 interacts with it is ridiculously high. The SDK bugs which contribute to the failure of the garbage collector (the focus manager one makes me grind my teeth a lot) are avoidable by Adobe, and they are admitting that working out where problems lie is hard (hence the better profiler in FB4, and the amount of posts on these forums about it). For the OP, I'd say, don't believe the hype in either direction. If you are planning on betting your company on either my or reflexactions posts, you'd be making a huge mistake. Do the leg work yourself, prototype stuff (not just AIR, but other options too), and actually find out which meets your needs. Gk. Gregor Kiddie Senior Developer INPS Tel: 01382 564343 Registered address: The Bread Factory, 1a Broughton Street, London SW8 3QJ Registered Number: 1788577 Registered in the UK Visit our Internet Web site at www.inps.co.uk <blocked::http://www.inps.co.uk/> The information in this internet email is confidential and is intended solely for the addressee. Access, copying or re-use of information in it by anyone else is not authorised. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of INPS or any of its affiliates. If you are not the intended recipient please contact [email protected] ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of reflexactions Sent: 27 October 2009 01:07 To: [email protected] Subject: [flexcoders] Re: AIR Performance "If you write it well, you will not have any CPU or memory issues" I am sorry but that is just so far from reality it is ridiculous. AIR does not just have 'the same memory and CPU issue as every other app'. The issues are well known and accepted so I don't where you come up with that notion, even Adobe have talked about how they are going to address memory issues in the next version and Flex4 has throttling code built in to try and make a PC usable when an AIR is in the background something not 'every other app' usually requires. When some guy is asking about makeing a decison that might affect the future of his company it really doesnt help to stick you head in the sand and pretend everything is hunky dory when it isn't.
