There's much discussion of RIA in the blogosphere, most of which I've been reading at some Microsoft blogs and some Adobe blogs. I'm not an artist, even my stick figures reveal my lack of skill (and I don't have the patience to get good like Richard Feynman did), but clean user interfaces and strong user experiences have been a side interest of mine dating back to my first reading of Design of Everyday Things. I've been turning my attention more toward RIA and the supporting infrastructures with this next wave of technology that includes WPF and Silverlight and Adobe AIR and Flash and Flex and others, and eventually might include Seadragon and Surface, and whatever technology other companies come out with. My views align with Scott Barnes in general, but I wanted to hash out what I think in writing about RIA since it'll force me to organize my thoughts. I see RIA as more of a shift in philosophy, a fresh approach to application design, than as a specific technology, though the new technologies enable RIA development.

There are two significant perspectives in the RIA picture: that of the developer and that of the user.

(Note: I recognize I am speaking in generalities and not supporting everything I say with evidence, but bear with me. If you're reading this and disagree, chime in)

The Developer Perspective

As developers, we tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. We get mired in discussions of what technology is better, why X language sucks because it doesn't support Y feature and why Z company is superior. These are religious discussions in the technology world and I have very little patience for them. There is no one language, no one platform that will be the best answer in absolutely every case, and when we have choice, why do we waste time complaining about a certain technology? We figure out which technology best allows us to solve a particular problem and we move forward. Sometimes we deal with constraints (like working at a company that only uses Microsoft technology) but as long as the job can get done, we're fine with whatever we work with (or we quit to work for a company more in line with our personal preferences).

I also see some software developers constantly trying to shift perception of Microsoft technology by only focusing on the negatives and ignoring the positives. On one hand, this indicates people are holding Microsoft to a higher standard - they expect perfection and nail Microsoft when perfection is missed. But this view ignores the reality - Microsoft is like any other big software company. Product quality varies from one to another. Some features may make no sense outside the design meetings where an imperfect decision had to be made. Other decisions are actually the right ones from one angle but wrong from a different angle. And some decisions are made that are just wrong. I hate blanket statements I've seen online that say "everything from Microsoft sucks" because it ignores the many successes and reveals the commenter's ignorance. There are legitimate reasons to zing Microsoft (for example, no label viewer in TFS 1.0? I know they have deadlines and have to cut features, but still, that feature got cut? :) ) so let's shy away from dismissing Microsoft - or any company - out of hand.

I used to hate Microsoft over ten years ago. Even back then it was hip to hate Microsoft. But my views changed abruptly when I gave MS technology a serious chance. It might have been Internet Explorer surpassing Netscape that got me hooked, I'm not sure. I haven't let go for two main reasons: Microsoft technology, as a whole, is actually quite nice; and, I can get my job done fast. I've had to wrestle far less with Microsoft technology than other technology. I keep up with other technology for the times when MS doesn't have what I need, or when I have technology constraints I can do nothing about. I mention this background because the "let's hate Microsoft" and "Silverlight will fail" discussions are nothing new to me. People think Windows is dying or new technology from Microsoft is a failure and these people totally miss the point. Wishing Microsoft would go away didn't work 10+ years ago and it's not going to work now.

At the end of the day, software engineers are problem solvers. We implement solutions in whatever domain we live and work in. Can .NET help us do this? Yes. Can the Java platform? Yes. Can I roll out professional websites using IIS, ASP.NET, Windows Server 2003, etc.? Yes. Can I do the same with LAMP? Yes. This is why the religious discussions should stop in our industry. The people that hate Microsoft will continue to hate them, the people that don't like Java or open source will continue their avoidance, but the funny thing is, these factions will continue to solve problems and continue being productive (hopefully!)

I'm semi-ranting and meandering a bit, but what I'm getting at is Silverlight/WPF aren't going anywhere and we need a more open perspective as software engineers. There's much about Silverlight that should get recognized as "cool" and important:

• Cross-platform CLR that does not require the .NET framework
• DLR, the dynamic language runtime, extending the language support of .NET even further
• Cross-platform support of a subset of XAML/WPF (which I imagine will grow closer to the full implementation over time)
• XAML XAML XAML. I'm incredibly excited about XAML because I see it as "the new HTML." Once Silverlight has strong penetration, website designers can choose to develop sites in XAML and be confident people can view them. No more dealing with messy HTML/CSS and testing on every browser to make sure the site looks/works the same.

I also like that the technologies on the Adobe side (HTML, JS, Flash, Flex) are given a home on the desktop via AIR. This makes it easy for website designers to extend their skill set to the desktop. Adobe brought the design world to desktop applications and Microsoft brought developers to the world of rich application design, far surpassing the stodgy world of the past (MFC, WinForms, etc.) There's plenty reason to get excited about both technologies. (For the record, yes, I'm aware of Sun's offering, but no comments at the moment) We must be responsible software engineers moving forward as the RIA world evolves, and this means staying well informed about as much technology as we can.

Which technology will "win?" That's the wrong question to ask because there's no competition. Both will continue to exist, each caters to a different type of developer, and the people that really matter in the end are the users.

The User Perspective

I envision a spectrum of users, from those with the absolute bare minimum of knowledge required to use computers to those that are fairly sophisticated but don't do software development. The one thing that unites users is they want their software to work. This is a simple goal at its most basic for software developers, but also a tough goal because everyone uses software a little different. Some people will love an application and others will hate it, either because certain features are hard to use or the user's sense of how a feature should work is different from how it actually works. The larger our user base is for a product, the more we have to first focus on the functionality that affects 90% of the users, and then going forward we can refine the product to work well with as many additional users as possible. This is reality again intruding on what we create - limited resources, limited time, etc. We can also never win 100% of the users - I doubt any product can. There are people that don't like iPods due to bad experiences, but it doesn't hinder the success of the iPod.

Let's start at the basic end of the spectrum. Basic users want things to "just work," whether it's their car or their TiVo or their operating system or some other software. They don't know how it works, they don't care how it works. If it breaks, they want it fixed. Take a car to a mechanic, call the Maytag repairman (okay, maybe call him to fix your cable), get the neighbor's kid to remove spyware. These are the users that don't care if software automatically updates itself - as long as the updates don't break anything. We can't disregard these users when we write software, or discount how many of them there are. These users are a significant part of the reason Microsoft stays as committed to backwards compatibility as they do - if users' existing software didn't work on a new platform, they'd refuse to upgrade, or worse, refuse to use Windows going forward. Whether a site is implemented in Adobe technology or Microsoft technology or whatever, the users don't know and don't really care. Why should they? They want sites they visit and links shared by friends to work, they want to read and respond to e-mail without a hassle.

As we move to the other end of the spectrum, we find users that have an increased knowledge of their software and how it works. They'll know where the advanced configuration dialogs are and will pretty much understand all the options. These users might turn off automatic updates in order to have more control, but the only reason they'd do this is if they've been burnt by automatic updates in the past. These users are more informed about technology and might have strong opinions. The more sophisticated a user is, the more control he wants over his world. It's probably why they are sophisticated to begin with - dissatisfaction with the default configuration, a yearning to understand all they can, or they have specific needs met only by the nether regions of a program (think about how many features Word offers that most users don't use).

The difficulty in developing software is knowing just how many options to expose and what sort of application design will appeal to the majority of users, and hopefully to all users. Most users won't explore configuration too deeply and will in fact be intimidated by too many options. Most users don't want a deep level of choice - again, they simply want software that does what they expect - though we must balance this with what the more sophisticated users want. When we design applications in the near future, we have to think deeply about users. It is a challenge, but the evolution that is occurring in the software industry can help elevate the nature of applications we design.

Conclusion

It appears I've wandered far away from RIA, but I haven't. I see Rich Interactive Application design (yes, I prefer this term, and no, not simply because I'm towing the MS line) as a refocusing on the user via rethinking our user interfaces and application designs, whether applications are on the Internet or not. Using new technology, whether it's Flex or Silverlight or something else, opens more possibilities for us as software engineers. I think we're at the beginning of the next major wave of how people interact with computers and it's definitely an exciting time to contribute our vision and our expertise. It is important to raise our consciousness about this shift and move away from arguing about which technology is superior. We're all in this together, now let's get to the work of building awesome, useful technology using the tools given to us.