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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."

30 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
    1. Re:Why switch? by kurokaze · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think more to the point is that Silverlight has been out less than a year, and yet Computerworld somehow thinks that there's going to be lots of books and job demand for it?? Oh brother.

      What's a job posting going to say? Wanted: Experienced Silverlight Developer, must have 3+ yrs experience even though the product itself has been out less than a year.

    2. Re:Why switch? by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wanted: Experienced Silverlight Developer, must have 3+ yrs experience even though the product itself has been out less than a year.

      Common enough on job boards anyway. ;^)

      --
      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. Re:Why switch? by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      can do, if I'm reading right, everything the other claims to be able to do already?

      Well, if I'm reading right, Silverlight lets you program it in pretty much any .NET language. That's something Flash doesn't do -- yet -- although they are coordinating with Mozilla to develop a common runtime which would make JavaScript fast, and also support other languages.

      I would much rather see both of them go away, though. SVG and JavaScript, please.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    4. Re:Why switch? by plague3106 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Heh. When the number of Linux distributions is critisized, it's good to have competition, because no one distro can fill everyone's needs. Yet when MS puts out a competitor to Java, and now Flash, it's "why do we need more than one?"

      Competition is good.

    5. Re:Why switch? by sm62704 · · Score: 5, Funny

      This Dilbert cartoon and this Dilbert cartoon are the perfect illustrations for your post. Look at those links in order, one follows the other.

      "Candidate must have an IQ of 300, two centuries of Unix experience and a track record of wining Nobel prizes."

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    6. Re:Why switch? by dougisfunny · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is a difference though. The various versions of linux are all going to be roughly compatible. As in you can compile code for anything as long as you have the source and build utilities.

      This would be more similar to introducing a new OS, completely incompatible to linux than introducing a new distro.

      --
      This is not the funny you're looking for.
    7. Re:Why switch? by IllForgetMyNickSoonA · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm afraid you are comparing apples and oranges here.

      Various linux distributions are pretty much application compatible. It's mainly just the packaging and the configuration tools that make two distributions look differently and maybe one or two specific drivers.

      Silverlight vs. Flash or .NET vs. Java is something completely different. Those are competing technologies, incompatible with each other, and also not available on the same platforms (Flash & Java pretty much everywhere, .NET and Silverlight only where Microsoft sees fit).

      Don't kid yourself - the reasoning behind Silverlight has nothing to do with Microsoft striving to make the Web a better place. It's all about gaining more control of a medium they never had much to say with (apart from the dominance of the IE, which is now being chewed at by Mozilla/Firefox)

    8. Re:Why switch? by SharpFang · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because Flash can't do 3D.

      At least, can't do sufficiently advanced 3D with sufficient performance.

      Is it worth it? I don't know, really. But it's easy to miss the point when a technology turns from 'mature' to 'obsolete' and from 'experimental' to 'cutting edge'.

      COBOL programmers kept smirking at JAVA developers too.

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    9. Re:Why switch? by plague3106 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Various linux distributions are pretty much application compatible. It's mainly just the packaging and the configuration tools that make two distributions look differently and maybe one or two specific drivers.

      You're glossing over a pretty big detail here. Pretty much compatable != compatiable. How many projects work on RH, only to be discovered that, opps, it doesn't install right or compile properly on Deb? How about a distro that only installs KDE by default, but not Gnome? Are those helpful to the end user? Ya, you can make it work... just like you can port Java to .Net, and visa versa.

      Silverlight vs. Flash or .NET vs. Java is something completely different. Those are competing technologies, incompatible with each other, and also not available on the same platforms (Flash & Java pretty much everywhere, .NET and Silverlight only where Microsoft sees fit).

      I would say the incompatibilities are the benefit of competition. If both sides are totally compatable, what's the point of choosing one over the other? Ya, you can switch easier, but neither has any really good features that are compelling when choosing one. So Sun and MS think of features to add that the other side doesn't have, thus improving their product. Java (supposedly) works on any major platform; .Net has features like explicit interface definitions, delegates, eventing built in, etc. Java has checked exceptions, cross platform capability, dynamic class loading, etc. Eventually (I hope) each side will incorproate some of their competitors features, thus pushing Sun and MS to think up new features.

      Don't kid yourself - the reasoning behind Silverlight has nothing to do with Microsoft striving to make the Web a better place. It's all about gaining more control of a medium they never had much to say with (apart from the dominance of the IE, which is now being chewed at by Mozilla/Firefox)

      Well, AMD isn't stiving to make the CPU world a better place, they are trying to beat Intel. AMD would love to get all of Intel's marketshare, I'm sure, and Intel feels the same way. What exactly is wrong with that?

    10. Re:Why switch? by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why?

      1) Performance features - for example an application in silverlight that pulls HD image formats in small chunks, allowing you to zoom into 100mb images instantly. (This is just one example)

      2) HD Video - that is VC1 compliant as well. Also the ability to support live and multi-cast streaming of HD Video (great for lowbandwidth servers hosting live events, and still providing an HD video of the event.)

      3) Easier - By the nature of how Silverlight is designed it is easier to design for and work with. You are basically just managaging Vista type XAML from WPF. No secret formats, etc.

      4) Agnostic programming - Silverlight you not only get a rich vector/bitmap based environment, but it is completely language agnostic and you can use anything from C# to VB to Python.

      5) Web Page interoperability - Silverlight is designed to within the context of the Web Page. For example you could hvae 10 Silverlight buttons on the page, and they are all separate from each otehr, but tied together via common code in JScript. This would be 'heavy' to do in Flash, and it wouldn't be easy to split the buttons apart, so you would ahve to design all the buttons in one Flash control, consuming the page with Plash, instead of just working with the page. Think of Silverlight as a cool new picture type that is also programmable, handles events, and animation when used like this.

      6) Features - Silverlight 1.0 is on par with Flash in terms of features, and has several Flash just cannot do. Silverlight 2.0 brings in a whole set of .NET controls, etc that surpass anything Flash can do.

      7) Back to Performance - Flash is a dog on non-Windows OSes. So far Silverlight is showing to be semi-equally fast on Windows and OS X, with low memory consumption on both. The same Flash applet running on Windows could use a couple of MB and running on OS X jump to 30MB and peg the CPU. Flash is NOT as crossplatform as developers would like to lead people to believe because of performance issues like this.

      8) Security - Silverlight is more secure than Flash (see recent Flash updates), the reason Silverlight is more secure because it runs inside an additional sandbox and is also managed code, it is .NET based.

      9) Structure XAML - The nature of how Silverlight is designed is based on Vista's WPF/XAML system. Vista uses XAML from everything from on screen display to printing (XAML is like OS X's Display PDF but with a chunk more features.) This means that Windows developers can easily move from Windows programming .NET 3.0 to Silverlight or the other way around. The XAML construct is also very intelligently designed, as it is more than just a graphical description format, as it has inherent events and animations, where Display PDF (or SVG as some like to compare) is inherently a static graphical format with no concept of advanced layers, animations, hit testing, events, etc. (As printing technology moves to eInk that is dynamic, XAML is ready to print to and produce output on these devices already, even though this is a years off concept.)

      Microsoft is also working to get the Linux version of Silverlight going by working with the Mono peeps, and Microsoft is also fully producing the OS X version as well as supporting as many browsers as they can at the same time, including Firefox, etc. So if this was MS trying to lock people in, it would be Windows and IE only, instead it has potential to be far more crossplatform than Flash. (Microsoft also just announced Silverlight for non Windows Mobile phones to be an alternative to Flash Lite.)

    11. Re:Why switch? by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What if they stop making the player for operating systems other than Windows when Silverlight becomes popular. What if they stop making a player for browsers other than IE?

      The market fixes this problem itself very nicely, if not immediately.

      If Microsoft does those things, there's suddenly a golden opportunity for another competitor or competitors to get going -- they'll be able to gain mindshare and traction much more easily from nothing, because they'll be providing something Microsoft isn't.

      Witness the way that Microsoft won the browser war and stopped work on IE, only to have Firefox emerge and provide strong competition. I know this is slashdot and it's free software uber alles and all, but realistically, if Microsoft had kept working on IE as hard as they were when they were trying to beat Netscape, there either never would have been a Firefox, or basically no one outside of slashdot-like communities would care. They didn't do that, and so a lot of people that in the continually-improving-super-IE alternate world wouldn't even be looking for a Firefox or who wouldn't want to work on improving a Firefox or who wouldn't want to make plug-ins for Firefox were primed for it.

      So in short, yes, Microsoft could do what you're saying if Silverlight crushed Flash, but it wouldn't last for long.

    12. Re:Why switch? by hummassa · · Score: 3, Informative

      I will agree as soon as someone finds a way to build both a Flash and Silverlight application from the same source code, makes almost all websites provide both and the users can choose with a browser setting which one to use. Then the issue is at least close to comparable to Linux distros... Plug OpenLaszlo...

      --
      It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
    13. Re:Why switch? by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

      Who is more evil. Catbert or Dogbert?

      Which uses emacs and which uses vi?

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    14. Re:Why switch? by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Catbert's evil is more personal. Dogbert hates people; Catbert hates *you*. Dogbert doesn't hate you specifically; you're just unimportant, there strictly for his own amusement or usage. Catbert, on the other hand, hates you. He might never have met you, but when he does, he'll hate you. And he'll want to hurt you. Specifically, you.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    15. Re:Why switch? by bunratty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bundling is certainly one way to abuse a monopoly. Another way is limiting interoperability. It's especially powerful when the two are used together. The ability to share calendars in Outlook requires Exchange on the server side. By bundling Outlook into Office and trial versions of Office with Windows, users get exposed to Outlook. Then they find out they need to run Exchange to share their calendars, which requires a Windows Server. By default, Exchange uses MAPI to communicate with email clients, so all users who connect to the Exchange server find they need to use Outlook, which requires Windows on the desktop.

      Similarly, Microsoft bundling IE with Windows caused the usage of IE to go so high that some developers wrote sites that work only in IE. To access those sites, users now find they need to run Windows to run IE so they can access those sites.

      You're woefully naive if you think Microsoft is in the business of creating products that compete on a level playing field with products from other companies. They are well skilled at using bundling and limiting interoperability to lock users into other Microsoft products. I note that Silverlight is not compatible with other multimedia players and will be bundled with Windows. Hmmm...

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    16. Re:Why switch? by Snover · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You've written a nice list, but I just don't see anything on it that's really, well, valid.

      1) As far as performance in general is concerned, ActionScript 3 is extremely fast. Though I definitely wouldn't say the same about ActionScript 2, it's not fair to compare an old version of Flash against a recent version of Silverlight.

      2) Flash Player 9 Update 3, which was released in December of last year, supports H.264 and HE-AAC.

      3) Flex uses a similar XML-based format called MXML for describing applications. Of course, "easier" is relative -- I'm sure if you've been working as a Windows programmer forever it's easier, but maybe not for someone that isn't used to how Microsoft does things. Also, what's a "secret format" that Flash has? The entire SWF specification is open (well, except to use to build a Flash player, which is pretty stupid), and ActionScript is based on the ECMAScript specification.

      4a) Flash has a "rich vector/bitmap based environment" (whatever that means -- it can draw on bitmaps and do transformations and effects, and it can draw vector shapes), and has since forever. How is this any worse than what Silverlight has (speaking as someone that has not used Silverlight)?

      4b) No, you can't use any language you want, but I don't necessarily see this as a huge advantage, since it adds an amount of additional complexity that could easily be problematic. You can't ask for "a Silverlight" programmer, now you have to ask for "a Silverlight programmer that also knows Python/C#/whatever" -- this will really narrow your potential hiring pool.

      5) Flash has ExternalInterface which provides 100% seamless interaction between Flash and JavaScript, and is hardly "heavy".

      6) Have you even looked at what Flash provides lately? ActionScript 3 is an extremely capable language. Without giving any specific examples of features that don't/can't exist in Flash, but that do in Silverlight, it's hard to respond to this. Provide an example and we'll talk.

      7) I've not personally experienced performance issues with Flash applications on OS X, but YMMV. Since I don't use Windows, it's hard for me to say if something runs more slowly than it would on a Windows box, but I never ran anything that seemed slow or that pegged my CPU. I've heard that it's slower on PPC architectures, but Windows never ran on PPC to begin with, so who knows how Flash would run on Windows if there were a PPC version. I've never ever run a Silverlight application, so I can't confirm your allegation that it works better, either.

      8) Can you provide a specific example of how the security model of Silverlight is more any more secure? Flash code runs in a sandboxed virtual machine ("managed code" for non-Microsofties out there) too, and has since the beginning of time. Saying "see recent Flash updates" just says to me that Adobe has addressed potential security issues that may have existed, and hardly damns the platform as being somehow tragically insecure. (And, in fact, the recent security updates to Flash are nothing more than hardening against some potential XSS attacks.)

      9) Sounds like MXML, again. Don't repeat yourself, you already mentioned XAML once. ;) Talking about "Display PDF" as if it were some markup language makes no sense, too, since Display is an application for viewing PDF files -- nothing more.

      Now, I'm certainly no Flash apologist -- up until about a month ago I refused to touch it, and ActionScript 2 is unbelievably shitty -- and certainly if we were comparing against Flash 8 or earlier running ActionScript 2 you'd have some valid points, but nothing on your list actually seems to me to be a valid reason why Silverlight is better than Flash here and now. And again, despite your protests that Microsoft is developing an OS X version of Silverlight, and is working with Mono to develop a Linux version, they have not been above releasing software for platforms and then dropping it without cause in the past, and I haven't seen them changing their colours.

      Regards,

      --

      [insert witty comment here]
  2. This is a surprise?? by kurokaze · · Score: 5, Insightful

    NewsFlash!! Brand new technology has less presence in market compared to entrenched, established technology!

    Holy Cow! Stop the presses! This is big news!

    Freakin' Troll of a story if I've ever seen one.

  3. if these downloaders are anything like me by rucs_hack · · Score: 3, Informative

    Like me, many of these 1.5 million are people who where breifly confused into thinking they needed silverlight in order to access the microsoft site. I took advantage of their dreamspark initiative, and encountered a 'you need to install silverlight' message. Turns out this was for a small silverlight animation, nothing to do with the main content.

    Since then I've not been back. Nor would I intentionally seek to develop for that platform. Why bother? There's javascript and flash already.

  4. 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
  5. In other news.. by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 3, Funny

    ..there seems to be little demand for the programming language I invented the other day while I had the flu, and a frightening lack of instructional books on Amazon for it. That's a real shame, because after some chicken soup and a good night's sleep I no longer remember how the goddamned thing works, and was really looking forward to cookbooking it.

    --
    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  6. Re:Incorrect headline by Renderer+of+Evil · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can spin too:

    Supply Outstrips Demand for Silverlight
    Undownloaded Installers Prove Problematic for Redmond Giant

  7. 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.

  8. Stupid choice of metrics. by cow+ninja · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stupid choice of metrics. There are more Windows 3.11 books at my local library than there are Vista books. So there must be more demand for Windows 3.11.

    How many books were on the shelf six months after Flash was released? How about job postings? Compare those numbers with Silverlight if you must use a stupid metric like this.

    Troll article.

  9. Cross-platform, or not? by dalleboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm still a bit concerned about the supposed cross-platform-ness. Is the Javascript file Silverlight.js still used to initialize the Silverlight object in Silverlight 2? If that is the case it will never be truly cross-platform.

    If you aren't running one of the platforms supported by Microsoft (Windows (IE, Firefox) and Mac OS X (Firefox, Safari)) you will get redirected to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=92800 (or similar), regardless if you have a Silverlight compatible plugin installed. Using the Silverlight.js file is the defacto standard way of initializing Silverlight, at least in previous releases.

    It will be the responsibility to each web-developer to update their copy of Silverlight.js in order to get Silverlight to run on other platforms than the ones directly supported by Microsoft. This will never happen, except perhaps for a small portion that are Moonlight enthusiasts.

  10. Millions? by The+Aethereal · · Score: 3, Informative

    Of those millions, how many are like me and have downloaded and installed Silverlight, but can not make it work? When I browse to a Silverlight page, it just says that I need to install Silverlight. So I uninstall it, redownload, and reinstall. Nothing changed. I believe this is in IE and Firefox.

  11. Re:Why switch? Because Flash drops the ball? by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not preaching that Silverlight holds the answers, or anything remotely like that. But in MANY people's opinions, Flash technology has really "dropped the ball" when it comes to keeping up with the times.

    When I first remembered it gaining in popularity, people were simply fascinated by the new-found ability to make web sites look more sophisticated and polished. You could do photo-realistic animations with your menus, have 3D fonts moving about the screen without having to render them ahead of time, trying to scale/size them for the page you were going to paste them in, etc.

    In the present, most people take a "been there, seen that" attitude towards Flash-heavy web pages. They look for the "skip" button as soon as one opens up, because they know the real "content" isn't going to be found in waiting for the bar graph to finish loading to 100% completion, only to hear some techno music playing behind a big video with the corporate logo spinning around. The places where I see Flash used today tend to be interactive games, such as the children's games developed for sites like pbskids.org or nickjr.com.

    In this arena, Flash may still be "king" - but it sure isn't giving a stable experience! I have a 5 year old, so I know! She loves playing the mini-games on these web sites, but I'm constantly hearing, "Dad!! Help! It stopped working!", only to go over to the PC and find it frozen up, or the arrow keys unresponsive in the game. Usually, I have to refresh the whole thing, losing her position in the game. Sometimes, the whole browser has to be closed and restarted.

    It's even worse if you're not using the "preferred platform" of a Windows box running Internet Explorer 7.

    Adobe long ago dropped support for their Flash player for classic MacOS, for example. Sure, it's an "outdated" platform, but an awful lot of old iMac G3's and G4's are still out there being used as "kid's computers", so this is a place where a current Flash player would still get a lot of use! They still have no Flash player developed for Apple's iPhone either, and that's an example of a NEW device they should have been on top of from the start.

    They're certainly making a great case for themselves that somebody ELSE needs to come along with a competing product!

  12. Re:1.5 million times every day ? by apdyck · · Score: 3, Informative

    The answer to this question is simple. I did a fresh install of Windows XP last night (for a client), and my third round of Windows Updates (after the Windows Installer and the bulk of the updates, including IE7), one of the updates was for Silverlight. To be fair, it was considered an optional update, but the average computer user sees update and thinks "I need that for increased security" or some such. Long and short, it's on Windows Update, and that's why they're getting so many downloads.

    --
    .sig
  13. Re:.net by Micar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why is this sad? The .NET platform has its quirks, but Microsoft did a lot right. As a new developer, I found it extremely easy to learn because of its uniform implementation, extensive documentation, and large community. No, it's not the only platform that has this, but it certainly helps. Now I can market those skills to a large base of employers and be confident that I can adapt to related technologies (WF, WPF, Silverlight) with ease. Again, why is this sad?

  14. Re:.net by dlim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is sad because it locks in developers and customers to one platform. I think you're either a little off or exaggerating. If I build web applications (or more on topic, Silverlight applications) using .NET as a platform, does that mean users on Mac OS X / Linux / mobile devices / etc can't use my application? No. Does that mean I have to run my application on Windows Server w/ IIS? Probably. Was I unaware of that when I designed my application? No. While I will agree that vendor lock is generally something to avoid, it's never the only consideration when building an app.

    It is sad because it was designed to do both these and so many are ignorant of this. It is sad that so many are fooled into the belief it is not sad and therefore exclude many from the products and services they provide.

    You seem to have some idea in your head that .NET developers are unaware of Microsoft's business practices. Or that we're gullible to develop in .NET. I've got years of Java and .NET experience. Some projects call for one, some the other. When I design an application, I consider the advantages and trade offs of each one as it relates to the project and I make a decision.

    In my opinion, what's really sad is platform zealots who make broad generalizations without providing any useful information.