So, there’s been tons of talk about Silverlight in the Flash community over the last few weeks. Lots of hype, lots of jabs, a few flame wars. I’ve even poked some fun at it’s name. But if you are a Flash or Flex developer, it is a subject you need to consider seriously, and take an unbiased look at, because it IS going to have SOME impact on what you are doing, somewhere down the line, one way or the other. I don’t know what that impact might be, but it’s not going away, Microsoft is going to keep throwing money at it for years to come, developers are going to want to use it, and clients are going to start asking for it.
So, I highly suggest reading the following posts from Grant Skinner and Chafic Kazoun, two Flash developers I highly respect. They give a very realistic, unbiased, unhyped look at what Silverlight is all about and what it might mean for you.
Sliverlight is cool!
[...] One interesting thought I had was about how this might affect Silverlight’s adoption rate. I mean, right now, sure, there’s a lot of talk, some good articles and a lot of money being thrown at it to cause the adoption rate to escalate unnaturally, but could it also be affected by high developer costs and very limited experience to draw on for Flex2/AS3/FlashCS3 development? It’s a fact that there’s far more Flex2/Flash work out there right now than you can shake a dead cat at. It’s not going to take too long for M$ to exploit these issues and they’ll start filling the gaps with the many .Net developers who will be very happy to take a piece of that Flash pie. [...]