On January 17/2007 Sho Kuwamoto from Adobe posted a question on his blog asking what the Flex team shoulud be doing to keep the Flex Eco-System humming along?
I'm not an Adobe employee, but as a Flex Community Activist I felt in order for those evangelizing Flex to be effective we need periodic information that gives us a pulse on where the community as a whole is.
To support that initiative I created announced the first Bi-Annual Flex Community Survey. A simple survey of 12 questions designed to assess how Flex developers feel about where they're at with some demographics about their team and company.
I aim to periodically conduct this survey every 6 months so that we can track the progress of the Flex community.
Below are my observations, and welcome anyone else to check out the results (links are at the bottom) and provide their insight as well. Let's continue to work on makikng the Flex Developer Experience a great one!
*Note: When I use the term Macromedia instead of Adobe, it's because I want to delineate what the company was at the time.
Respondents
My thanks to the 275 of you that responded to the survey. I'd like to just warn those who are going to analyze the results to keep in mind that most of the respondents are blog readers (*mental note, ask that question on the next one); I've found those who read blogs tend to be more progressive people. So just keep that context in mind.
Committment Level
46% of respondents are fully committed to using Flex, that's great! However that leaves the remaining 54% evaluating the technology, or limiting themselves to low risk/small applications. 60% of respondents say the Flex adoption is limited and sporadic, vs the 40% who say that Flex has been accepted as a primary and endorsed technology from a corporate or business unit level.
Between recruiters contacting me about short Flex contract positions, and various job postings that are for only 3-6mo contracts, this supports my theory that many companies are interested in Flex, but aren't ready to go full bore yet. They feel there's probably an opportunity, or someone in the company is pushing for its adoption, but the company/team feels that Flex isn't a technical strength (yet) and want to limit their exposure to risk by being in an exploratory mode of testing to see how quickly they can leverage the technology, how fast their team can become effective at it, what kind of real-life hurdles and limits need to be factored in with any Flex based project, and what strategic advantage it affords (if any).
Usage of Flex
42% of respondents have been using Flex for less than 6 months, and a whopping 68% combined have been using it for less than a year. That I'm sure is no surprise to anyone as Flex 2 was released only months ago - but it's a reminder to Flex Bloggers and Activists that this is still a VERY young development community. I.E, keep posting beginner and intermediate level content.
But there are a couple of other subtleties that are also worth noting. The stats also support Adobe in making the right pricing and product model choice. If the stats had indicated that most have been using Flex for over 1 a year, or even 2 years - that would show the community hasn't really grown, and that most folks are coming from the Flex 1.5 days.
Expertise Level
The community is fairly spread across here with 34% Novices, 40% Intermediates, and 26% Advanced. Keep in mind, this is what people PERCEIVE themselves at, so it's a psychographic stat (vs demographic). If you read books on (user interface) usability, they'll say you want to get people quickly past the beginner stage, and the bulk of your users being effective as an intermediate. It's the same for a programming language.
I think Coldfusion has a text-book case of achieving this. Join the various discussion forums, and the only kinds of questions you'll see are people describing very advanced topics, or dealing with rare and obscure issues. Although CF is a much older technology, the point is that even as a newbie you can become effective at your job REALLY fast.
Flex is an interesting uptake experience. As a newbie, it's amazing. With a few lines of code you can make these wonderful interfaces, but it doesn't take much for a beginner to hit the massive 2 mile high brick wall if intermediacy. Compare that to Coldfusion, I've found that (guestimate) 80% of CF'ers are able to totally succeed at their job barely even being at an intermediate level.
Here's an example. You're backend is returning data from a database:
| 2005 |
Jan |
1.2 |
| 2005 |
Feb |
7.2 |
| 2006 |
Jan |
1.2 |
| 2006 |
Feb |
7.2 |
| 2007 |
Jan |
9.2 |
| 2007 |
Feb |
2.2 |
To dump that from the result of a remoteObject call into DataGrid is *SOOOO* easy it's awesome. Newbie Feeling: I AM A GOD!
Let's add one simple requirement: On the Flex side, insert a row whenever there's a year change, that spans all columns that highlights the year to produce this:
| 2005 |
| 2005 |
Jan |
1.2 |
| 2005 |
Feb |
7.2 |
| 2006 |
| 2006 |
Jan |
1.2 |
| 2006 |
Feb |
7.2 |
| 2007 |
| 2007 |
Jan |
9.2 |
| 2007 |
Feb |
2.2 |
The immediate gut reaction of an newbie and even intermediate is: I have no idea how to do that, and now I have to spend days combing through docs, searching google, and hoping someone on FlexCoders can help me.
*ALL* of you reading this know how to do it in a handful lines of code with your non-Flex Web technologies (CF, JSP, ASP, PHP). I've even posed this question to advanced guys, and even then they don't know off the top of their head and start responding with very complex answers.
For a new technology to have uptake, one emotional battle that will occur is that it's very challenging to go from being effective in one technology and accept the feeling of being a newbie/intermediate in another. Especially if you're a Sr level Developer, you're going from being an Expert to a Newbie...
For Adobe, Evangelists, Bloggers, and Activists... The technology, tips, tutorials, and documentation need to keep that in mind. Help content needs to be all about: this is how you did it in XYZ technology, and here's how now do it in Flex.
Additionally, for Adobe, the learning curve of Flex needs to be reduced. I would dedicate some resources purely to making optional add-ons/modules/components that cater to making beginners effective fast. That may mean making components that are totally inefficient, but at least let a person get something out the door, and as their skills become stronger, they move onto doing things the better way...
For example Coldfusion has CFUPDATE, CFINSERT, etc... Only a beginner of CF would use this as it helps get them going fast, and as their skills improve they move onto more advanced ways of doing things.
Primary Technologies
Other than Flex, more than half (54%) use Coldfusion. But Java (38%), PHP (29%), AJAX (22%), and .NET (20%) command respectable audiences. No surprises, right?
Here's what's worth noting: Macromedia when it launched Flex initially was very mindful to position Flex as a universal technology, and made a lot of effort to try preventing people (especially Java'ites) from thinking Flex is some kind of Coldfusion extension or even related to it. From a product strategy approach, that was the right move to ensure maximum exposure. Of COURSE getting Coldfusion guys is an easy win, but Macromedia (at the time) resisted the lure to focus on CF first and try to build up from there.
So, what's interesting, is despite all that... you can't mess with the passion of Coldfusion developers and their loyalty.
Who uses FDS?
The majority (75%) don't. FDS has amazing abilities, but from people that I talk to evaluating Flex, all they want to do is simply send data back and forth, and that's not worth the FDS Enterprise price.
Initial Struggles
Data Services (#1 issue)
Charting
Custom Components
Events
Going from the HTML (CF/PHP/JSP/ASP) way to the MXML/AS way
How to architect/structure a Flex app
Debugging
Cairngorm
Renderers
Current Struggles
Custom Components (using, making)
Design to Developer workflow
Architecture
MXML/AS Language
Learning Curve
Data Services
Skinning
Lack of examples, documentation
Charting
Deployment
States
*** Team and Company Size ***
Now this is interesting!
67% are 1 to 5 team members (87% combined are 10 or less people).
40% are companies with less than 20 people over all (61% combined are 100 or less people).
Flex 1.5 and it's $15000 per CPU (aka $120000 needed if you have two quad processor load balanced web servers) because Adobe felt that most companies have deep enough pockets that that kind of price tag is no big deal. The community clamored, and hence we have a much more affordable Flex 2, however Adobe still feels that big mega enterprises are where it's at (with the continued pricing model of $20000/CPU for FDS Enterprise, and the Quick Test Pro plugin requiring an FDS license).
I've worked at many a monolithic enterprise, and even then getting that kind of dough at a team level is extremely challenging. You're only hope is to do some kind of split-the-cost with other teams and hope that your Finance department is able to break down a purchase order and apply it to different department budgets (i.e, good luck).
What this stat tells me is that it's the small and agile companies, that don't have to deal with big enterprise red-tape, that are the ones that are able to quickly adapt to new technologies.
Taking things further - Hurdles
FDS
- Java developers can't justify the cost of FDS to only use it as a basic vehicle to transfer data
- Testing automation not feasible due to FDS requirement
- Too expensive
Learning Curve
- Web Development paradigm of CF/PHP/ASP/JSP paradigm to Flex's model
- Flex Newbies/Intermediates find it hard to justify taking a longer time to develop an app in Flex vs using existing technologies
- Time it takes to learn
Cost Centers vs Profit Centers
- Profit Centers find it easier to justify if you can incur revenue with it
- Cost Centers struggle with trying to justify the ROI
Vendor lock in, fear of depending on a single vendor (Adobe)
Level of Buy-In
- Customers aren't ready
- Management/Executive level
- Corporate standards
- Company Tech Architects determine level of technology buy-in
- Investment in existing technologies massive
Framework/Client Concerns
- Weight
- Speed
- Security
- Limitations (e.g look and feel, skinning, full control over right mouse button options)
Resource Availability
- Difficult to find Flex experts
- Lack of Flex skill in the company
- Lack of examples
- Lack of documentation
Wrapping it Up...
I hope that my observations and the results of the survey will assist activists in their mission to help grow and mature it more effectively.
The results and comments are available here:
Summary
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