An interview I did with Jon Rose of InfoQ was just posted. I talk about my experience with Flex component development, the Flex commuity as a whole, and the current state of the enterprise software market in general. I’ll probably get some shit for some of my comments about enterprise software where I say that it’s all “almost uniformly horrible” 🙂 I don’t really mean to call all enterprise software crap, it was more a broad strokes comment, the kind I’m apt to make after a few beers. So if you’re making awesome enterprise software, don’t be mad at me, keep doing awesome stuff.
Here’s just a small excerpt from the interview, read the entire thing at InfoQ.
Enterprise software is almost uniformly horrible, but there’s no reason for that. We’re seeing a “UX revolution” in RIA design, and for all the buzzword nonsense surrounding “user experience, ” there’s something real happening in terms of the overall quality of the experience delivered by RIAs. We’ve seen some really great and innovative work in consumer RIAs, with a trend toward simple and intuitive interfaces. And yet in enterprise software this trend has barely even begun, it’s all still complex. I want to see enterprise applications treated like consumer apps, with the same attention to the user experience and with a consistent drive to simplify and make everything more intuitive. Complex systems don’t have to be presented with confusing software. But it takes more work to figure out the simple, elegant solution. It’s far cheaper and faster to make bad complex software than good simple software.
