Flash: What Java Wanted To Be
It’s been fun getting questions on why I’m building widgets (especially after Widget Companies: Fool’s Gold). It’s been even more fun building them. I’ve learned a lot: most critically, that Flash has become what Java wanted to be.
Java was meant to be the language that made platform irrelevant. It was so high profile, some would argue, that the Common Language Runtime (CLR) evolved in response to it. What happened?
When Java was created, implementation led and design followed. Today, design leads and implementation follows. Acquiring users is the name of the game. That puts sites, widgets, and applications that are easy to use and look great at a premium.
That doesn’t mean design complexity — in fact, just the opposite. Less is more. Clean lines, plain backgrounds, and easy uploads win. Flash won because it carried the day on design. It grew from a simple drawing tool into an animation product and from there into a complete authoring environment.
Coupling moving visuals with actions has always been powerful. But with more than 500,000 developers and 325 million Web users of the Flash player, Flash is more than an environment. It’s a platform that’s everywhere.
To be clear, Java has become a platform in the enterprise. Talk to today’s CIO and Java is everywhere in the server room and in some places on the desktop: legacy application integration for example.
What happened? Java got the C programmers, but Flash won the hearts and minds of the designers. Flash made it easy to create good looking animations and ultimately videos viewable by anyone. It wasn’t about delivering the highest quality — it was about fast and easy.
Talk to today’s entrepreneurs and you’ll hear that one of the most in-demand skillsets, if not the most in-demand skillset around, is the ability to do great design work. People who have a natural talent for design are at a premium. Those who can couple great design with fast implementation even more so. Flash is the catalyst that makes that possible.
Java took fair share in the enterprise. But Flash won the consumer. Java can read 10 million user records from a database and expose them on a web page. But Flash can make you look good doing it.
Java may be a thousand words, but Flash is the picture. And as we all know…