RIA jobs market trends: Silverlight vs Flex vs JavaFX
Several days ago I’ve received message with link to the InsideRIA. Mike Slinn of the InsideRIA has posted interesting article about job trends regarding Silverlight, Flex and JavaFX. If you go to the Indeed webpage and search for these keywords, you might be surprised. Here are some really interesting facts.
Getting started
I don’t know how familiar you are with the Indeed.com web page – basically over there you can search and look at jobs market trends. You enter different keywords and you get the chart depicting the job trends for some time period.
I was inspired by the Mike Slinn’s experiment and I have extended it a bit and I’ve compared trends for Adobe Flex, Silverlight and JavaFX jobs on Indeed.com and on Google Trends.
Charts, charts
And here are the results:
You can go by yourself and try with: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22adobe+flex%22%2C+silverlight%2C+javafx or even further modify your search.
And for Google Trends…
…you can go at: http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22adobe+flex%22%2C+%22silverlight%22%2C+%22javafx%22
Be aware that I’m not sure what is the coverage in terms of geographic area being included, what is the total number of the analyzed elements, but still there are some clear indications that are easily visible on the upper charts.
Conclusion
JavaFX is still there. I can recall myself saying that JavaFX will not be huge success bit it will thrive for some time. I don’t know much about JavaFX, I’ve used Java extensively before during my high school and later at the University when I was developing interesting simulations and animations for physics modelling, but have not been playing with JavaFX.
Flex is doing really well though it seems that the growth rate is lower when compared to the Silverlight. Are you surprised? You should not be. Though lot of people have been projecting that Silveright will fail miserably and that Microsoft has nothing to do in the RIA area, strong campaigns and truly solid product (especially new Silverlight 3 with interesting and modern features) have, obviously, been accepted pretty well within the industry.
Two years ago I’ve said that there is enough space for JavaFX, Silverlight and Flex. Today – I’m not really sure about the Java FX but I’m more than certain that Silverlight is here to stay.
I’m getting number of e-mail messages from people looking for Silverlight consulting expertise, help and support. And I’m absolutely delighted about that for some obvious and then again for some not so obvious reasons. I’m sure that guys involved with Flex are having also great time and nice project pipeline as well. What’s up with JavaFX? Anyone here using it? What are you experiences and what do you think about these current trends?
Also, you might want to take a look at one of the most read posts on this blog about Silverlight market share / penetration where even Microsoft’s own Product Manager has responded in comments.
At the end I might conclude by citing the Mike: “It’s a war out there!”
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The search terms used do not do a fair comparison, and actually skew the results.
To do a fair comparison and get more accurate results with the true picture, use one of these as your search criteria:
“Adobe flex”,”microsoft silverlight”
or
flex,silverlight
or
flash,silverlight
or
asp.net, flex, silverlight
I think that’s the only way to do a valid comparison with these trend analysis sites.
Once that is done, Silverlight appears to be far, far behind.
You be the judge.
Thing about “flex” and “adobe flex” – “flex” is often used in those jobs postings and in search as a part of “flex-ible worktime” and similar stuff therefore I think this gives better picture… But sure, anyone can try and play with these charts and research them…
Flex Time is only .05%
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22Flex+time%22&l=
Indeed lets you group by terms. Here’s a chart that may give a more consolidated picture: http://tinyurl.com/mnq75c
The way I would interpret this is by saying unfilled demand for skills on the Adobe platform is 2:1 over the Silverlight platform.
I also ran a quick sense check on a couple individual job boards and the result was the same.
- dp
(Full disclosure – I work for neither company and have not developed with either tool.)
This is nice one – thanks for sharing!
I don’t think this graph is fair to Adobe. I’m a Microsoft .net developer, so I want it to be right, but you’re not really doing an apples to apples comparison. You compare the following:
“Adobe Flex” <– vendor name included
"Silverlight" <– vendor name excluded
"JavaFX" <– vendor name excluded
You either need to include the vendor name on all comparison values, or on none of them. People who create web-based job listings probably just write "Flex", not "Adobe Flex".
Until you change the query, I think Silverlight is being over-represented here. I did "Flex" vs "Silverlight" vs "JavaFX" and Flex was much more popular.
I realize that "Flex" might also be found in the context of flex time, so I'm not sure you can really even do a true apples to apples comparison.
John
As I said in one of my comments here – I am aware of this fact – my intention was not to be biased towards Silverlight – and almost certainly you are right about the fact that true comparison is hard (if not even impossible to make here) especially because of the “flex” term usage in different contexts. Anyhow, I’ve also questioned the significance and quality of the data included (as many other have done too in their valuable comments, THANKS FOR ALL OF THEM) – but still, results are indicative and interesting.
Your choice of search terms creates significant bias towards silverlight. Try to use “flex” and “microsoft silverlight” and compare:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22flex%22%2C+%22microsoft+silverlight%22%2C+%22javafx%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=flex%2C+microsoft+silverlight%2C+javafx&l=
as you can see we get hugely different results.
JavaFX is a joke. After scanning the documentation for a few minutes, it becomes immediately obvious that it was designed by morons. It can’t be long before Oracle puts the entire project out of its misery.
Well, no one says “adobe flex” but “flex”.
Simple. try again with “flex,silverlight,javafx”. It’ll be quite different.
However, it’s true that the growth rate of Silverlight is higher that any others.
Using job adverts to judge the success of emerging technologies is really not a good idea. As a source of data, it is incredibly poor. You think the data is telling you something about the technology — in reality it’s telling you about the humans who use it.
The problem with job adverts is they aren’t honest. Companies want to sound like they are, if not at the very cutting edge of innovation, then certainly within walking distance. They also want to attract candidates with modern, future-proof, skills. As such, it is common practice to add one or two buzzwords to an ad.
A code shop that focuses mainly on VB and C# might add Silverlight to their ad — they’re not planning to use it (indeed there’s a reasonable chance they don’t even know what it is) but they’ve heard it’s the next big web thing from Microsoft, so…
(I remember seeing an ad once asking for 5 years C# experience — about 6 months after C# was launched!)
Problem is, I doubt this skewing of the data applies evenly to all platforms.
Microsoft’s developer community spans a broad spectrum of environments (desktop, web. mobile, games…). Responding to hype from Redmond, a company writing VB.Net web sites or Windows desktop software might be tempted to include Silverlight in their ad, even though they have no intention of entering the RIA market.
The Adobe/Flash community, however, is much more narrow in scope. Flash is a platform which is already close to being an RIA tool anyway; so if the words “Flex” and/or “AIR” appear in an advert, it’s more likely (I’d suggest) they are genuine requirements, not buzzwords.
As for Java — well I suspect JavaFX looks too much like applets or Swing to tempt any JavaEE shop into adding it to an ad as a buzzword. It’s possible JavaFX is being used as a buzzword for Swing jobs (in fact I know it is!!), but as few apps are written in Swing anyway (such is the woeful history of Java on the desktop), I doubt this amounts to much.
Conclusion: Looking at the keywords in job ads, I suspect Silverlight’s figures are highly exaggerated, Flex’s are only slightly exaggerated, and JavaFXs are probably impossible to measure accurately using this technique at this stage.
Hi,
I can agree with some of what you are saying, also, please note tha I have mentioned that I can’t really say much about source of this data, geo-coverage and other parameters – so, it is possible that these information are not the “best ones around”, but I would agree that they are quite interesting.
I have noticed the terms used in Google trends were
“adobe flex”, “silverlight”, “javafx”
However, I have use the following terms to be more consistent:
“adobe flex”, “microsoft silverlight”, “javafx”
The results are not as distinct but Silverlight still wins.
Sasha (Silverlight supporter)
Thanks for comment and interesting insight Sasha!
Let’s not forget – this post started with a mention of job trends for Silverlight.
I think people got upset because of the skewed results (regardless of what camp you’re in).
Google just covers search terms. Since Silverlight is the new hotness, I’m sure there are a ton of searches for it. Flash and Flex are more mature – so I’d expect to see that reflected. (And we all know that the word Flash is probably used in many search terms – not always looking for technologies — but from a technolgoy perspective, I imagine the searches are likely higher since it’s still used everywhere.)
If anyone wants to gauge demand (in terms of jobs) – just search for listings on Dice (or any other job board), and compare the two. Silverlight isn’t really in demand yet (although, I’d expect that to change).
It’s not surprising that demand isn’t that high for Silverlight. I know everyone has seen riastats.com and the info they provide. Agree with it or not, install base is only at 20% (and it’s ovgiously much higher for flash). Not many companies want to target only the 20% who has the plug-in vs. the flash player.
From a development perspecitve – if you’re an RIA developer, I think you’d want to stick with a technology that you can use to sell yourself. At the moment, Silverlight just isn’t it.
(But the plus side of that is that since it’s not that in demand, there aren’t a ton of good dev’s for it yet – so the rates are likely to be higher if you manage to find something.)
Also keep in mind that Flex is much more capable than Silverlight now, and there are a ton of dev’s for it. All of this translates to lower costs – which the enterprise certainly looks at when making their selection. Particularly when you consider that Adobe owns the design space, and you can’t ignore designers when doing RIA’s.
And let’s all keep in mind that all Adobe truly has to do in order to minimize Silverlight is allow developers to code in .net in eclipse (or perhaps create a plug-in for visual studio).
If that happens – then why would anyone stick with Silverlight. (I’d think this is something that we’re likely to see from Adobe.)
Chill, all you SilverLight doubters. With millions of Asp.Net developers looming out there, SilverLight’s explosive growth has never been a question. Once Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4.0 are released, watch out!!
I also wanted to add that the stats from this site demonstrate what eveyone is saying…
http://www.silverlight-travel.com/blog/2009/07/07/silverlight-catching-flex/
I’m a big Flex/Flash fan and have been enthusiastically endorsing the technology for some time, but I can see the sun setting on Flex/Flash. The Silverlight moniker is somewhat misleading … though understandable from a marketing perspective. Understanding that Silverlight really still is WPF/e changes the long term picture significantly. The fact that Silverlight 3 has narrowed the gap so significantly between Flex/Flash and has WPF as its big brother means that any school yard squabble will not end well for Flex/Flash.
It’s not a question of if or when, but how soon WPF/e will get to the top rung.
Flex is highly productive, and will dramatically accelerate development.
I beleive web 2.0 is a future.
And there are huge job market for Flex,flash etc.
The are many job site on this some of them are
http://www.Jobsriialto.com
http://www.Riajobs.com
http://www.Richmediajobs.com
I used flash to develop games before. Right now i am studing silverlight and find it is a powerful competitor for flex when we develop application software. But in online game industry microsoft need to do something more.
I’m a MS WPF / Silverlight developer and Flex developer, I develop projects for all area of business. And I can say for sure that Flex is far superior in every aspect than WPF and Silverlight.
I’ve develop various projects in both technologies what I develop in 30 min in Flex I take 2 hour in WPF. Flex rules, if you are a MS developer please see a completely != world with far greater power in flex. Take my word for it and check “flex in a week”, and you’ll know what its about.
regards.