> A lot of projects have been successful programing to the JVM. Dave,
While I know you intended this as a comparison, it does raise and interesting possibility for a potential life-line to Flex should development in the Flash Player cease or take a different direction from the community's vision... In my view, at a high level, Flex is, above all, a methodology for quickly and effectively building apps utilizing a declarative syntax (MXML) for the view layer and a dynamic language (ActionScript) for the event/logic layer. If it ever came down to it, you could just as well replace ActionScript with Java, leaving the MXML syntax virtually the same and target the JVM (or other virtual machine yet to be developed). As an aside, it is interesting to see Java targeting OpenGL in initiatives like this one: http://jmonkeyengine.com . I would love Flash (you can replace "Flash" with whatever bytecode is compiled by Flex) to alternatively use OpenGL / DirectX on the desktop and something like WebGL in the browser as it's rendering engine - this would really raise the stakes and make it a compelling target for game developers though, for the time being, it seems like Adobe has already made 3D gaming it's current focus for the Flash Player.
