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Little Demand Yet For Silverlight Developers

Posted by kdawson on from the they-can-afford-to-wait dept.

ericatcw writes "At its Mix08 Web development conference, Microsoft said that its Silverlight rich Internet application platform is downloaded and installed an average of 1.5 million times every day; Microsoft has a goal of 200 million installs by midyear. But Silverlight is at the beginning of a long slog towards gaining traction. Computerworld did a quick analysis of job listings at nine popular career sites and found that an average of 41 times more ads mentioned Adobe's Flash than mentioned Silverlight. As expected only 6 months after Silverlight's introduction, the number of programming books carried on Amazon.com was also heavily skewed in favor of Flash."

3 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Why switch? by TheSpoom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why should I, as a Flash developer / animator, move to a less stable, less well-known, less-compatible platform from one that is stable, has many developers, is cross-platform (mostly), and can do, if I'm reading right, everything the other claims to be able to do already?

    Not that I am a Flash developer (at least, I haven't been for a while), it's just a hypothetical.

    I think the answer for Microsoft is "because we need you to help us create another hook to keep people on Windows." Linux beta, eh? I'll believe it when I see it.

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs
  2. Poster is Astroturfing? by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Check out ericatcw's previous Slashdot stories:

    "Google Apps Slow to Replace Competition"
    "Firefox Struggling to Compete as Corporate Browser"

    Hell of a coincidence that they're all pro-Microsoft.

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs
  3. Waiting for 2.0 by Westley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I suspect many developers have been waiting for 2.0 as the "real" Silverlight. It feels to me like 1.0 was mostly a stake in the ground to make it clear that MS is trying for the same market as Flex etc - but it wasn't enough to build proper applications.

    2.0 should (if it lives up to hype/expectations) be much more useful.

    Given that beta 1 has only just been released, it's not at all surprising that there isn't a lot of demand for developers in the marketplace yet, nor books available.