Visions and technology

Juten Tach,

just read this article from Ryan Stewart (Evangelist for Adobe). He is complaining about the hype, that is generated around Google Wave and the fact, that he thinks, Wave could have been built with Flash/Flex years ago. And why Flash/Flex apps haven’t managed in the past to generate such momentum. Also read the comments, as the discussion there is a great read. I made my own thoughts about it.

One thing is, in most cases, where new stuff on the internet is getting hyped, it is about concepts, not technology. Only if the technology supports an innovative concept, then also the technology participates from the hype. So with Google Wave, sure, perhaps this could have been built with Flash, but it wasn’t, because no one had the idea and/or the will and/or possibilities to build it. When Flash had its hype years ago, it was because of vector graphics and animations running in the browser. It wasn’t the technology, it was the concept of having the possibility to show rich graphics and animations on the Internet and build them easily. Now Flash is an established technology, so it won’t see another hype itself so easily. Guess, we have to live with it: Flash isn’t cool, innovative apps are cool, no matter, what the technology behind it is (that’s not to say, Flash wouldn’t be a good starting point to build great apps).

In the comments, Wave is compared to Aviary in terms of “hype-potential”. Well, i don’t think, you can compare these two apps. Google Wave is a tool, that is targeted to mostly every Internet user. Aviary is a tool for a very sharply defined user group. So, if Google Wave was featured on CNN, you cannot expect Aviary to have that, simply because of the target group.

Also, a very important point is, that Google simply has the monetary power to build platforms like Wave. It is the same thing with Google Maps or Google Earth and so on. You need a heck of a lot of money and resources to build and maintain these applications. That limits the number of companies / teams, that can build them.

My last point would be, that Flash in terms of a technical platform is still pretty young. It is hard to make the cut, but i would consider the introduction of ActionScript3 as a point in time, where Flash seriously started to turn into a technical platform, where it became interesting for classical developers to work with it. And still, considering the developer tools, that we have for flash compared to stuff, that Java- or C#-developers have, there is a long way to go. If i am not mistaken, a major part of Google Wave was written in Java and then ported with their Web-kit to JavaScript, so they probably could use those nice tools that exist for java development.

So, what does that tell us now? Actually nothing new, because it’s always been that way, that great ideas at the right time, that come together with enough money and resources have a big chance to excite the crowd. Let’s see, how Adobe will improve the flash platform not primarily in terms of featureset in the player, but more in terms of developer tools (some fresh ideas for the Flash IDE perhaps? We need to get those designers back on board).