A Plea for Developer Unity

http://www.bigspaceship.com/blog/labs/will-all-the-flash-devs-please-stand-up/

by rayboyd • 16 years ago

8 11 16 years ago

notauser• 16 years ago

An interesting post, but...

Should we always use a power drill for everything... even when a regular old fashioned screwdriver might suffice? And what of a hammer?! A jigsaw?

This is not like the situation with the HTML5/Silverlight/Flash/Apple battle for developer mind share.

- Information is more important than physical things, because information lasts forever and is often unique.

- Locking information up in such a way that it permanently has a gate keeper or cannot be accessed by everyone is not a good thing.

- Through the choices developers make they directly select which technologies succeed.

- The technologies that succeed will change what information is available and to who. (For example, if Silverlight wins, Linux users stop being able to watch Internet video. If Apple wins then everyone has to fork over money for a H.264 license. If Flash carries on winning then that's hardly perfect either.)

None of these outcomes are going to be a particular roadblock to affluent westerners (particularly Americans and/or people who aren't rigid idealists), but the impact on the developing world and also the startup environment will be pretty big.

Therefore picking sides in this particular technology struggle seems totally justified to me.

tumult3• 16 years ago

Article summary:

Bitch bitch moan whine can't use Flash on iPad bitch whine moan misunderstand how application development works bitch whine moan I don't know that many languages have C FFIs or even what an FFI is whine whine moan I make all of my money working on Flash sites and am afraid of a world where Flash is irrelevant because I have no confidence in my abilities to program outside of this one limited environment where all of my experience is moan whine moan Apple sucks the iPad should run OS X.

rayboyd3• 16 years ago

That pretty much the opposite of what the guy is trying to say. Did you even bother to read and digest the article? And what the hell has foreign function interfaces got to do with it anyway?

I despair at some of the commentary and elitist snobbery within this community that is expressed from time to time. I stumbled across this place off the back off a PG essay and loved it ever since because of the hacker nature and general level of intelligence of the people. I am starting to feel like it is a waste of my time even trying to be a part of it based on attitudes and comments like this.

But hey you mentioned FFI and expressed a populist ill judged comment, so you got my vote. Good-day sir.

tumult3• 16 years ago

No, it's exactly what he said. I don't get where you're coming from at all.

He started by saying that the iPad not having Flash is bad:

The announcement that the iPad won't support Flash kick started a lightning storm of opinions. The alleged issue at hand is that the iPad doesn't support Flash. This is a bad thing. [..] The iPad isn't revolutionizing netbooks, it's devolving them back to a fully closed era.

He said the platform is locked to one language in one environment:

One environment, one language. A cumbersome, time consuming distribution process.While you can certainly be expressive using Objective-C and with the iPad, the decisions on how a user engages with something we make should be left to the experts.

Which is not even remotely true. (Also, I'm pretty sure he just called Apple non-experts on user interface design, addition to conflating programming language with user interface design.) I have written iPhone applications in Scheme, Haskell, JavaScript, C, C++, and probably some others (in addition to Obj-C.) You can use the Objective-C layer if you want, or call the C functions directly, use the FFI from Python or other languages, etc. He thinks Objective-C is the only way to write iPhone applications because he's clueless.

He makes the claim that they aren't only a Flash company. That they are open to other technologies. And that the iPad should be an open platform for developers to do whatever they want with. Why doesn't he take his own advice? You can develop iPhone and iPad apps using something other than Objective-C. Get to it. Hell, you can even write them in AS3 and compile to a native app. Why isn't he? Why is he bitching about the closed iPad environment? Because that's not what he actually wants. He wants Flash, in the iPhone/iPad browser, so that Flash still seems relevant to corporate marketing departments, so that he can keep getting paid without having to learn something new.

As for your ad hominem attacks: blow me. I don't care what you think about me or what my comment scores are.

dasil003• 16 years ago

The assumptions of Flash UI wouldn't work on the iPad. That is plenty of reason not to include it, all sinister corporate motives aside.

(edit: perhaps I was too brief, no mouse pointer has severe implications for Flash—think it through)

Kilimanjaro• 16 years ago

Developer here. I don't care about flash, if it dies (along with silverlight) much better. Java should go the same way. HTML is the way to go. Everything that can be done in flash or java should be ported to HTML so nobody can have control over it.

So no, wrong call for unity.

lukev2• 16 years ago

I can see your point with flash, but... Java? No, unless by Java you mean "applets" which noone uses anyway.

There is more to life than the browser, and Java (ok, the JVM: Java-the-langauge sucks) is a pretty good tool.

lukev2• 16 years ago

I don't like the "technologies are just tools, sometimes you need one, sometimes you need another, blah blah blah" line of reasoning.

Sure, it makes a certain amount of sense, and it sounds all nice and reasonable. But that's just not the way it is. Technologies a ARE better or worse than eachother, and the choice of which to use does have technological, social and business ramifications.

The situation is actually more analogous to arguments of whether to use domestic or foreign oil, or discussions about the merits of trade unions. The options are not just handily available to pick off my workbench. They will shape the way things are done in years to come.

A Plea for Developer Unity

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