Flex Builder is dead, Long live Flash Builder

So the announcement is now official: Flex Builder “Gumbo” is being renamed Flash Builder! As a Flex developer, when I first heard about the rumor, I was a bit worried: I had many difficulties to make Flex adopted by European “enterprise” customers, as I had to avoid using the word Flash! Sad but true, Flash used to have negative connotations for many clients – they were seeing it as a product only interesting to create games and banners.

So the clear distinction between Flex and Flash was very useful at the beginning to introduce the product and demonstrate the power of the Flash Platform. Hopefully for us, things evolved in the last 2-3 years, and Flash now is clearly seen as a mature product for enterprise development. Anyway I want to point out few things that could require some attention :

- The answer is definitively “YES”: the term Flex should not disappear in few years. I know that Flex is “just a framework” but the distinction between an application built using the Flash Professional IDE (Timeline/AS3) and Flash Builder (Flex/AS3) should remain. The knowledge required to use both products is different even if at the end both produce a Flash app. I can easily see that from time to time the term Flex will disappear behind the product Flash Builder. By the way, should we say that we are creating a Flex app. or a Flash app. using the Flex framework?

- Second point, confusion can arise from recruiters: what kind of profile recruiters should look for? Direct consequence of my previous point, clients will search for developers able to use Flash Builder or Flash Professional. So recruiters will look for Flash Platform developers... Isn’t it too vague? It will really depend on how precise will be clients requests (you know what I mean). Naming itself to be easily found will be a bit harder: Flash Platform developer, Flex developer, ActionScript developer, Flash Designer… Maybe it’s just me and things will go smoother

- Last point, the naming Flash Builder vs Flash Professional. I strongly agree with Peter Elst’s post, the epithet “builder” sounds so cheap compared to “Professional”! Flash Professional should be renamed something like Flash Designer as it’s mainly used for animation and interface design.

To makes things clear, I’m not saying that the rebranding is a bad move, but it will require some time and maybe need some guidance from Adobe.

UPDATE : A must read from Lee Brimelow, Flash Builder rebrand FAQ

Posted in Flex