Like many Flex developers, I came to Flex development after a long stay in the Java world. For many years, Java and the surrounding community provided an exciting technical playground. Overall, the community gave developers like myself an amazing set of tools and an excellent group of thought leaders. Yet, we can look back now and realize how many silly ideas there were at the height of Java. I have long thought that Cairngorm borrows on some of my least favorite of these bad ideas, and now it looks like they are continuing down that road.

Now, they are attempting to expand from just a framework to some sort of Flex MVC framework think-tank. Yakov Fain’s reaction to this is priceless:

First, let me ask Java developers a question. Imagine that one day you wake up and read the following announcement, “As of today, Spring framework is the foundation for delivering of successful J2EE projects. In contrast to earlier versions, many parts apply across frameworks. So, if you are using Struts, JSF, and especially Tapestry, just forget about all these complex to pronounce names. From now on, no matter what framework you use, you are actually using Spring’.

Some of you would think, “Yakov is either out of his mind or is writing this blog sitting in one of the coffeshops in Amsterdam”. Wrong! I’m just reading an announcement about the upcoming release of the popular Adobe framework Cairngorm 3: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm+3

When I first saw Cairngorm (post), it was easy to understand what they were trying to do, as the framework is so heavily influenced by the original version of Struts and the Core J2EE Patterns. Unfortunately, Struts was barely a fit for the original problems it was attempting to solve, and are completely inappropriate for building client-side applications within a real runtime. Struts used an adaptation of the MVC pattern called MVC2/Model 2, which was created to deal with building user interface within request/response model. This model is completely at odds with building a rich Internet application.

So, obviously, I find the move to hold Cairngorm up as a template for architecting Flex applications a bit concerning. Beyond that, one of the other things in the Java community that never proved to bring fruit was the desire to standardize anything and everything, which this idea seems born out of.  I am actually foggy at best with what they are trying to accomplish, and find it completely bizarre that they would try and morph a framework into this “thing.”  Do we really need some sort of Flex specific think tank on a long established pattern?  Also, it seems very bold to attempt to group the work of so many others under their umbrella.

Is this just an attempt to keep the brand name relevant of a framework whose time has come and gone?

I just finished up a post on HTML 5 and Flash for InfoQ.com. The news post just covers the conversation happening in the community(s) (not my opinion). I am glad browser standards are finally evolving, and think all developers will benefit from the advancements. Being a Flex developer, I have obviously embraced the idea that third-party plug-ins are not a bad thing when trying to build real applications. It is too early on a Sunday morning to get to far into this debate, but I wanted to throw out a couple of points:

1. Since the language around browser standards is very feel good, with terms like “open web,” I think it is often lost how much big companies, such as Google and Mozilla, stand to gain if developers validate their assertions around browser standards. In all reality, the open web vendors are no different than the vendors providing “third party runtimes,” they want / need people to use their platforms.
2. The “open web” never existed. Let’s take a look at a quote from Ian Hickson, HTML 5 specification co-editor and Google employee:
   

   “It would be a terrible step backward if humanity’s major development platform [the Web] was controlled by a single vendor the way that previous platforms such as Windows have been.”

   Not only does the language seem a bit dramatic to me, but I think there is little risk of this happening (outside of the standards). Historically browser standards have been the main catalyst in bringing us down to the lowest common denominator in web development. We have all worked on projects where the management decided to just build the application to work in IE because the browser standards are unreliably implemented across browsers.

The reality is that the RIA space is currently experiencing wonderful competition across vendors (Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX) with applications being built and deployed on a number of different platforms. Frankly, none of the current platform advancements that are making developers lives easier have come from standards based implementations.