4 years after the promise that HTML5 will change the world and will suppress any other technology for web sites and web applications, we don't see that happens. Flash is not dead, Flex is not dead and HTML/JS is getting some difficulties in the last 4 - 6 months to continue its growth as it was in later years.
Maybe it's because people are tired of waiting a real change in HTML/JS stack and it's tools? seeing that they continue without getting the tools and facilities they had years ago with Flex and Flash? I don't know, but we can see lots of signals out there: * ActionScript 3 entering again in TIOBE list of 20 most used programming languages. I think latest week it climbed again to 17th position. * Adobe AIR getting more that 1 Billion apps installed (right now 1.8 Billion) in all desktop and mobile devices all over the world * Apache Flex getting lots of momentum with many people working on bug fixing and releases (near every month there's a new Apache Flex release) * The new framework FlexJS to use Flash or HTML/JS that continues developing. * HTML5 video is still crap and is still key technology in Google and Youtube * Adobe AIR strategy to "code once and run in every desktop and mobile device" is widely adopted (since Flex Apps running in Safari Mobile, the only scenario where Flash can not be deployed is not important anymore since people prefer Native Apps than Mobile Browser Apps, and Adobe AIR with Flex is a great solution for this purpose). In TIC, many people is getting frustrated of HTML and they are coming back to Flex again, since all the marketing buzz is now vanishing and they see that there's no productivity like before when you switch from Flex to HTML. Flex is not the king anymore since there's other options out there, HTML, native, .... but is still a very valid technology to make Apps for desktop and mobile, and for many the best. My own way of thinking is use each tech for what they were made for. So use HTML for web sites and marketing online (wordpress, and the myriad of other html techs out there), and use Flex for Application development for desktop and mobile (with Adobe AIR). For me using HTML to build apps or using Flex to build web sites is a wrong decision. Adobe said it will cost 5 years to HTML...well after 4 years and still nothing in the horizon that could us think that promise could be real, I think we have Flex for several more years still ahead.
