The Exasperating World of Tech Journalists

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I am not a regular reader of Dr. Dobb’s Portal, but I know it’s a fairly well regarded tech news site. Unfortunately in the world of rich internet applications, well regarded tech sites tend to get the facts all wrong. Here’s a gem of an introductory paragraph from the Dr. Dobb’s post:

This year, some of the big boys gave every impression of having suddenly and simultaneously remembered that there is such a thing as a desktop. Google got Geared up, Adobe announced AIR, and Microsoft saw the light with Silverlight, all of which are tools to help web developers integrate operations on the Web and the desktop just a little better. That oft-repeated mantra that the web browser is the new operating system? In 2007, not so much.

Why do tech people continue to lump Silverlight in with Adobe AIR and Google Gears and then go on to describe it as a platform for bridging the web-desktop gap? If they were just talking about all the new technologies that are coming out, that would be one thing. But they continually misunderstand the features of Silverlight.

We’re in a new space and I can understand how the number of new technologies would be a bit confusing at times. Hopefully we can all just keep writing productive posts about the different RIA solutions and maybe we’ll get through to people. You can start with this article. ;)
[tags]Rich Internet Applications, Tech Journalists[/tags]

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  • http://www.simplifiedchaos.com Todd

    I totally agree with you. I originally wrote a review on Silverlight saying I was very disapointed with it. You know why? Because all the articles I read about it compared it with AIR (Apollo at the time), and when I got down to coding with it, it turned out to be more comparable to Flash…except there aren’t even any input controls (I’m sure they’ll be some soon, though, and that there’s going to be a large supply of 3rd party controls…which is something I’m hoping will happen with Flex/AIR). Silverlight is a browser based-runtime. Nothing more. And saying it has a subset of functionality of WPF is like selling someone a cardoor handle saying it is a subset of a car.