This is an open-ended question but I'll give it a whirl... I don't see Flex per se as the linchpin in defining a niche market. I see it as a vehicle to help bring real-world software engineering practices to web-based applications.
I've spent over twenty-five years in strict software engineering practices organizations primarily using C++ and Java. Both of these languages have been the foundation for large applications (standalone & web-based) for many years as they are easily scalable as well as being highly maintainable and they offer/promote strong reuseability. Flex/AS3 is a nice addendum to both C++ and Java. It scales nicely and promotes / forces you into writing maintainable and reusable code using packages and true OOP classes. Depending on whether or not the so-called rich-client continues to expand, Flex/AS3 will always flourish especially when the application becomes tens of thousands of lines of code. I don't see Javascript in its' current form (Object-based vs Object-Oriented) a strong foundation in promoting the maintainability / reuseability that Flex/AS3 offers in large-scale rich-clients. I have yet to write a javascript based application that is near the size/complexity of applications I've written in Flex/AS3. It gets too unwieldy very quickly and un-manageable for large development teams. For example, I have a Flex/AS3 application that is roughly a megabyte (compiled using external RSL's) in size and the number of packages/files is enormous as is the number of lines of source. No management team would ever consider taking this on in JS. With all this said, there will always be a demand for good Flex/AS3 developers especially in companies that require strong software engineering practices. I also think the solutions that are now appearing that convert MXML/AS3 to iPhone/Android applications will also keep it alive and well. Let the bashing begin... --- In [email protected], "fred44455" <fred44...@...> wrote: > > I wonder if you consider Flex being still a niche market or something > extremely popular? Also where do you see the demand & trend for Flex > developers in the future? Great? Or not so great? >
