It must be March Madness – there is a development toss up going on right now as developers move away from single platform and proprietary towards not just Web 2.0 but broader any device 6As RIA-Rich Interface Applications. Smart shops are not stopping at the Web based or any OS Platform but are looking for application development tools that streamline the process of going to any device and both offline as well as online. Thats the end game in development and the cause of so much disruption in the market.
Perfectly good software development with say ASP (Microsoft server dependent) or JSP; absolutely collapse when they are asked to perform on any device or offline and online or any platform in the case of .NET-based systems(remember Mono is a disease, it will never perform as well as .NET and Ballmer+Gates will guarantee that). So one see the cropping up of more versatile tools for moving between development environs:
EZJcom – has tools to get back and forth between Java and .NET code and tools
20 Steps – a plan for Perl to Python Conversion ;>
ASP Translator – online conversion from ASP to PHP
Mainsoft – has avery sophisticated .NET to Java and J2EE conversion suite
NetCoole – does ASP to JSP or J2EE, VB6 to C#, etc, etc.
There is even a Race to Linux competition with serious judging and prizes for converting from .NET to Linux. Expect Microsoft, which has Java and PHP converters in its stable, to have a “reverse – direction” contest.
But of all the tools we have come across here is one of the most interesting, Servoy VB to Java.
What makes Servoy interesting is not just the “code in VB approach” but output cross platform Java – but the fact that increasingly Servoy is promoting any device and offline as well as online capabilities. And like Adobe with Apollo (which will apparently have a beefed up performance for its JavaScript/ActionScript engine), Servoy has its own cross – platform runtime. Secured runtime engines like Servoy, JVM, Apollo, etc are going to solve a lot of problems – watch for technology to scoot over to these solutions – and in remarkably short order because they solve security, cross platform, cross device, offline and online plus a whole spate of media/data ready problems. And their performance just gets better and better and not through increasing MIPs but software refinement like HOTSpot and SuperThreading, etc.
To echo the Bald Ballmer – “its Interoperability, Interoperability, Interoperability …….. with a side order of Agility”
(c)JBSurveyer 2007 If you liked this, let others know:
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