AIR, I don’t get it

August 17th 2007

We had a great conversation at CF_Lunch today. CF_Lunch? Well, if you are in the Atlanta area, the local CFUG promotes lunches for CF folks to get together. Check out http://www.acfug.org.

So, what’s with the title of this post? During our conversation a member posed the statement: I don’t get it. He was referring to AIR and its usefulness. Well, it got us all thinking. As developers, AIR is another kewl bread slicer, but what is AIR to say the VP of IT at ? Sure, it allows IT to leverage the skills of Flex/Flash developers to build desktop applications, but what else? What else in relation to Enterprise IT, ie inTRAnets? I could pose a few things perhaps, like cross-platform abilities, thought that is not a selling point for inTRAnets, eh? But what about you, what do you think?

The table discussed the recent AIR event. A few of us felt adding some content to address this to the event could really help the product.

DK

Filed under: AIR, ColdFusion, Flex, Techy |


4 Responses to “AIR, I don’t get it”

  1. dave powell
    August 17th, 2007 | 1:53 pm

    think of it in terms of cost…

    …how much does it cost to develop a piece of software in C++ or Java?…now, how much does it cost to have a piece of software developed in a web language like Flex or CF?…in my experience, much lower…(we’re not talking about quality at the moment…i understand that’s a whole other argument)…

    … your existing web application can be ported to AIR for next to nothing…

    …perhaps some research on the # of web developers vs. the # of true software developers would be an interesting perspective…

    …also, this opens up the market to the hobbyist developer…a bit of an oxymoron in software circles…but totally plausible in the field of web development…

    just some hypotheticals…

  2. Ryan Stewart
    August 17th, 2007 | 6:58 pm

    Hey Doug,

    You’re right that we haven’t really talked much about the enterprise and it’s partly because for the 1.0 release we’re focusing on the consumer space (mostly). We think there is a lot that AIR can bring to the desktop and our 1.X release will focus on that.

    After we get 1.0 out the door you’ll hear a lot from us about AIR and the enterprise. Thanks for the feedback.

    =Ryan
    rstewart@adobe.com

  3. doug
    August 17th, 2007 | 9:21 pm

    @Ryan ah, so more to come, eh? Kewl. I suppose IT managers want to see a point release or two first anyhow maybe? Its a rocking product and you all are really sharing the love. Need a few killer apps in AIR to kick start it…maybe Buzzword :) Got that finetune.com AIR app running, but I’m not going near that play list of yours ;)

    @dave with the IDEs for Java these days, does development really cost more in Java vs AIR/Flex? Assuming equivalent quality as you mentioned.

  4. guiroo
    September 21st, 2007 | 6:58 am

    @Ryan - That’s a sweet playlist man. :)

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