Last month, We posted a Drunk On Software video interview with Anvil project founder, Ryan Knight.  This month Ryan shared more about the project in an InfoQ.com email interview I just posted.  Check it out and let Ryan know what you would like to see in the next release of Anvil.

A new episode of Drunk on Software is online.  We talk with Bruce Eckel in this episode. Let us know what you think!

In the latest installment of Drunk On Software, we dicuss Anvil with project founder Ryan Knight.  Ryan is a colleague of mine at Gorilla Logic. Enjoy the video and let us know if you need any more information on Anvil.

In 2008, Flex reached the tipping point where it went from a technology with possibilities, to wide spread usage.  The year started with Adobe releasing Flex 3 and AIR 1.0 and finished with an updated release of AIR (1.5).  According to friends at Adobe, in mid-2008 there were about 150,000 Flex developers – a number that pushes it beyond interesting, to a viable and growing community.  Also, there were the Sun Deflextions…

In my consulting travels, it went from a technology few knew of in 2007, to one where most developers had some impression of it, or had even done some work with it in 2008.  It has been exciting to see a technology go from the fringes to the prime time.  I do hope that Adobe finds a true revenue model, and Flex doesn’t just become another Java as far as the vendor is concerned.

Personally, this really means new challenges for 2009, as I am tasked with writing RIA content for InfoQ.com and building real applications with Flex.  In late 2007 and early 2008, there was a constant stream of announcements and excitement around the platform.  As 2009 starts, I think it has already become more about the reality of building real world applications.  So, on the InfoQ side, I think my new challenge is going to be providing resources on how to best implement applications on the platform and talking more about the weaknesses of Flex and how to address them.  I guess that is the reality for any platform that becomes mainstream.

All that said, 2008 was an exciting time to be associated with Adobe Flex!

James and I have posted our latest Drunk On Software video, Flex for Managers and Architects.  It is actually the first video we recorded for the series.  Check it out…

In 2007, I became an editor for InfoQ.com.  InfoQ.com is an enterprise software development community, with news, articles, video interviews, and a yearly conference.  As an editor, I write weekly news items and contribute the occasional article or video interview.

Today we posted a list of the Top Posts of 2008.  I am excited to have a few items on the list.  I had the number one item in the architecture community, a news post titled “James Gosling on Adobe Flash / Flex / AIR.“  In the Java community, I posted 2 of the top 5!  Both of these posts are original works that I collaborated on with James Ward (Top 10 Adobe Flex Misconceptions & Top 10 Mistakes when building Flex Applications).

Click through and check out all the exciting 2008 news!

This week we posted a video with Stephan Janssen.  Stephan is a great guy and an important voice in the Java and Flex communities. Check out the video here.

James and I finally posted the next video in our Drunk on Software series.  In this episode we talk with Adobe System’s Chet Haase about a bit of everything.  Enjoy!

http://www.drunkonsoftware.com/2008/12/08/episode-4-when-i-am-king/

It has been fun to see the open source model working with FlexMonkey.  Stu put our testing tool out there for the world only a month or two ago, and we are already seeing significant contributions.  The latest contribution is from Marvin Froeder (VELO), who has helped us update the framework to work with Flex-mojos (the popular build tool).

I have been hearing really good things about Mate for a few months now.  I have been rebelling against dragging additional frameworks into Flex just for MVC for a while now (Flex and MVC /  Cairngorm).  I finally got a chance to spend some time coding with Mate on a flight back from San Fransico this weekend.  I think it looks promising.  I am still not sure the leverage is enormous, but the cost seems low.  It appears to provide a reasonable structure for Separation of Concerns and managing events, without requiring much additional code.  Hopefully, I will have some more time to do something more complex soon with it, but I think it may be the type of framework I have been wanting.