The Difference Between An Evangelist and A Geek

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re: The Difference Between An Evangelist and A Geek

tgrand — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:41:13 GMT

Thanks for clarifying this in a later blog post. :) You know, I only worry about this because I *really* want Silverlight to succeed!

re: The Difference Between An Evangelist and A Geek

tgrand — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:17:41 GMT

It seems like many people are viewing this battle through such narrow viewpoints. There is such a huge world of possibilities when it comes to rich web apps. Even with all of the stuff in SL 2.0, it's still going to be missing a lot of stuff that Adobe can do and has been able to do for years. Of course, some stuff will be better done in SL. Other stuff with Adobe.

Jesse, I really appreciate your enthusiasm and the info you offer, but I think it's WAY premature to say that SL should be an "automatic choice". If you're making statements like that now, you should not be surprised to find yourself labeled as an evangelist. It might be a good time to step back and re-think things from an outsider's perspective.

One last thing. Is it just me or do most developers not even dream of calling a 1-800 # to reach support at MS? Last I heard it was more like a 1-900 #. I've always gotten a strong (but indirect) message from MS when it comes to support: don't call us, find the answer online or figure it out yourself.

re: The Difference Between An Evangelist and A Geek

wisecarver — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:34:56 GMT

I'm really glad that you are happy to tell us why Silverlight floats your boat. ;-)

U da man!

btw, I've pretty much had it with NYT.

re: The Difference Between An Evangelist and A Geek

arbour — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:29:43 GMT

Jesse

I've studied Flex a great deal over the last year, reading source code and 3 books - including "Flexible Rails with Flex 3" and "Flex 2: Training from the Source".

The data controls in Flex are extremely poor. The work needed to create a simple update form against 1 table is painful - it takes me back to the VB 3 days. It's really that poor - glance through those 2 books and you'll see the proof.

I'm an old Delphi and Access developer, making complex front ends. If Silverlight comes close to either of these 2 in making master-detail and other complex forms easy, you will demolish Flex/Flash. GWT and XUL don't come close to Flex, so Adobe is your only viable competition out there.

I've been studying the WPF for the last few weeks, and am looking forward to what you bring out. If you have documentation on creating forms to search, edit, update, and so on, while using remote calls against ASP or Java (or ...) servers fronting databases, that would be very valuable. Thanks.

The Difference Between An Evangelist and A Geek

DotNetKicks.com — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:09:36 GMT

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

The difference between a geek and a snob

Mirrored Blogs — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:56:17 GMT

The difference between a geek and a snob

Jesse Liberty — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:46:32 GMT

The difference between a geek and a snob

Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:12:28 GMT

re: The Difference Between An Evangelist and A Geek

dmw — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:07:22 GMT

Jesse

I've always worked with MS technologies, but I think that you're being optimistic in thinking that Silverlight is an automatic choice, even with SL 2.0.

Flex is an excellent platform for rapidly building RIAs, on a technology that is far more mature and far more stable than Silverlight.

That's not to say that there isn't merit in Silverlight 1.0 or 2.0. It's just that Microsoft are going to have to deliver, and deliver well, to make Silverlight that automatic choice.

I, for one, hope that they will. And some of the things that I've seen so far (and of course can't yet talk about), do give me hope.

But there's an awfully long way to go yet.

Dave

PS. And having waited half an hour today for someone on the MSDN helpline to pick up the phone, only to be told that the MSDN subscription site was down and they had no idea when it might be back up - "but please try tomorrow and if it's still not working, give us a call back" - then maybe that single 0800 number might need a few more people behind it.

re: The Difference Between An Evangelist and A Geek

wireplay — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:20:20 GMT

Great post Jesse. Great post.

Alan