Is Silverlight worth taking on?

scbarnes — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:51:12 GMT

Catching up on some of my RSS Feeds (3wks of unread, egads!) and I noticed this post titled
"Is Microsoft Silverlight Worth Taking On?"
(http://blog.wildmousesoftware.com/2007/08/is-microsoft-silverlight-worth-taking.html )

It's actually a healthy insight into what I'm guessing others may or may not face in the crossroads of adopting some of our new toys (Expression Studio, Visual Studio 2008 and Silverlight).

I like seeing stuff like this:

"..What I don't like about the browser includes the use of JavaScript for client side scripting. Now JavaScript is a foundation of AJAX and there is no way a modern web application can go back to the constant page refreshes of previous generations but JavaScript just doesn't cut it. I want a solid debugger, faster execution, and solid source code management..."

As that's something I've noticed Microsoft do fairly well. It's also important to note that the author isn't weighing up "what does it have in terms of SDK/Framework etc" but more "what does it have to support everything but those two" (tools etc).

"..What I am hoping not to find is that using Silverlight on the client ties me to the whole Microsoft stack. I wouldn't mind using the Microsoft stack but I don't want to be locked in to server software by my client software..."

Nope, that's the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) working for the author in this case, as down the road their will be a breed of choice, how mature they become is entirely up to the community whom wish to take the DLR out for a test run.

I like this post a lot, as it's blunt, to the point and I'm guessing others must have similar thoughts rolling around their heads.

Writing Silverlight with Coldfusion.

scbarnes — Sun, 27 May 2007 06:43:14 GMT

Vince Bonfanti is the President and co-founder of New Atlanta Communications, LLC - makers of BlueDragon a Coldfusion-compatible web application server that allows native deployment and integration of CFML applications onto ASP.NET and J2EE servers.

He also recently spent some time at Redmond, getting his head around the DLR and where it could fit within his companies current product offerings. The results were beyond encouraging and I for one am excited that they are pushing forward down this path.

To quote Vince:

"..Contrast this to the situation that existed prior to the introduction of these technologies and tools. Building Windows desktop applications required using C/C++ and programming to the Win32 APIs. Building HTML-based web applications required use of either ASP, JSP, PHP, or CFML, along with JavaScript. Building RIA applications essentially meant using Flash and ActionScript. Each of these technologies comes with its own set of programming tools, and there's little or no integration among any of the developer tools and tools used by designers..."

He get's it, in that you can have a kickbutt output, but if developer struggle on the input it begs the question on what we are doing here? Are we building a house with a hammer or a nailgun? which is easier and don't they in the end help produce a house?

Vince alongside others in the 3rd party vendor community are taking a detailed look at the DLR and what it has on offer, which in turn means positive things for concepts like Silverlight going forward. It also provided the right amount of context around Microsoft's position in this space, as it's not a Zero-Sum Game which "competitors" are misleading folks into believing.

As a Coldfusion developer of years gone by, I'm kind of excited about Vince's movements in this space as that'd be kind of cool to write CFML to produce Silverlight applications? heh very cool indeed.

Oh by the way, did I mention Silverlight is still alpha? not bad so far eh?

(I was supposed to catchup with Vince at MIX07, but we never aligned schedules, damn I wish I had of though)

The MossyBlog Times Archives 2007 - 2009 : DLR

Is Silverlight worth taking on?

Writing Silverlight with Coldfusion.