Will Flash devs at Yahoo become castaways?
February 1st, 2008 . by polyGeek
I wasn’t a big fan of Microsoft before I worked for them as a contractor for the Xbox/Zune division. After working for them I found even more reasons to dislike them.
That’s how I feel about MS as a whole but I loved working with the team at Xbox/Zune and got to do some really cool things. But we were purposefully located off campus and so didn’t have to drink as much cool-aid.
Note: I always spit mine out when no one was looking. :-)
I was told point blank by my direct manager that I would never be a Microsoft employee as long as I was an Actionscript developer. I was given the option to migrate into User eXperience design work, like he did, and become an employee. But as long as I wrote Actionscript I would be a second class citizen at Microsoft.
If Microsoft does buy Yahoo then I wonder how all the Actionscript devs there will be treated. Certainly better than an Actionscript dev at Microsoft but how long will it be before they are getting visits from the Silverlight team?
Silverlight instructor says: Hey look, you like to write code, right? Well with Silverlight you can do the same things that you can with Flash in 10x the amount of code. That’s right. You get to write more code. Just what you’ve always wanted!
And not just Flash devs. Think about PHP. From what I understand Yahoo is PHP. They have contributed a great deal to the language over the years. Are they eventually going to migrate to .NET? I’m sure that would go over like a lead brick.
All I can say is that if I worked for Yahoo I’d be updating my resume just in case the deal goes through. Or come to the freelance world where there is more work than you can shake a stick at.
Note to Keith Peters: you were right. :-)
What was I right about? I love being right! :)
@Keith, Being right rocks!
You were right about having to much work to do as a freelancer. It’s hard saying no.
Tops on my 2Do list is to do less. Starting in March. :-)
February is going to be a tough month because I said yes to too many people. :-(
I can just see the silverlight evangelists descending from paramilitary choppers onto Yahoo HQ with the brainwashing equipment. repeat after me “I love silverlight…Actionscript is the devil”
Working ANYWHERE fulltime is no guarantee of anything so you should always keep your options open/resume updated and so on. But… I think your general point may be a bit simplified. First, I think a fair assumption is that the reason Microsoft is interested in Yahoo is because they like what they’re doing. Flash is important to Yahoo. Sure, maybe they’re just going to sink many billion dollars to kill off all Flash work, but that seems odd. Sure, long term if Flash is a threat to Microsoft they’ll want to own it or “own” it.
Keep in mind that you did Flash work at Microsoft. They still hire AS programmers. And, for me, I’ve had the three biggest jobs (all Flash) in the last 3 years funded directly or indirectly by Microsoft. So, if they’re trying to alienate Flash programmers they’re doing it in a strange way.
Po ma?ym przegl?dzie MXNA widz?, ?e nie tylko ja jestem podobnego zdania… Ale te?… By? mo?e podobne: Z?o?liwe oprogramowanie firmy …
@Ethan, dude, I spit oatmeal on my keyboard reading your comment. :-)
@Phillip, hey, if you’re not going to diss Microsoft then get off my blog. :-) Seriously, I don’t think any changes will happen anytime soon but eventually some egghead Microsoft crony will say in a meeting, “Hey, why don’t we build that Flash widget with Silverlight…” And the Flash erosion will have begun.
I don’t think they will go out and rebuild any existing Flash apps with Silverlight but I’d wager that there’s going to be pressure to start building new ones with Silverlight pretty soon - if this all goes down.
And I guarantee you: Microsoft has a goal of not have ANY Flash content on ANY of their sites. If Ballmer told me otherwise I’d laugh in his face.
If Microsoft can achieve a Flash-free presence than more power too them. It makes as much as sense as Adobe trying to not use MSWord, or Apple doing all that crazy stuff with QuickTime. Hey, why don’t you diss Apple… They’re the ones who want to Flash–that seems way clearer. I believe apple.com has 0 Flash where microsoft.com (and their properites) have TONS of Flash.
But, really, if an “egghead” suggests they use Silverlight and they can do it, great. If they try and fail then they’ll end up improving Silverlight or giving up. As a developer I’d feel no threat whatsoever. We’re all invested in Flash because we can make a living with it… and it’s powerful. If something else comes along that offers something better that’s a good thing.
Back to Yahoo… it’s far from a done deal.
Oh how torn I am, in ways. In my opinion, Microsoft made computing affordable-available to the masses in more ways than open-source ever has. Yet in another way they spurred the emergence of the open source community. I dislike large organizations yet realize that sometimes they are needed to tackle other larger ones - Google?
Ok so lets say that MS-Yahoo is allowed to continue to develop and support Ajax and Flash third party developer API’s. Its bad enough now to support parallel toolkits with these two technologies. Now they will have to add a third to be sure and what will that do for innovation?
@Mike, I’m torn to. I don’t like MS but completely agree that they have done a great things for the IT industry.
@Randy, In this discussion I’d fall back on principles of biology. Because I think that what we’re really talking about here is evolution.
There are times when having a long stable period of a mono-culture is a good thing - think of a forest growing and maturing - and there are times when having a great deal of chaos and rapid evolution is necessary to bring about change - a fire sweeping through the forest to make room for new growth.
I think the question is, “What period are we currently in?” My guess is that we’re entering a period of rapid change and then soon - a year or two - we’ll settle into more stability. But that’s all just wild speculation no my part. I probably don’t know what I’m talking about.
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