Flash vs SilverLight : SilverLight will win (my prediction)

I've been living in Adobe Flash / ActionScript land for the last few weeks, and there has been a very unexpected side-effect.

Today, when I was working in Microsoft Visual Studio again, it was a joy to use!

I always used to think Microsoft Visual Studio was HIDEOUSLY slow and inefficient - and it is - but after inflicting Adobe Flash on myself for a week and a half, Visual Studio seems absolutely awesome.

As yet another example of the sheer stupidity which pervades Adobe Flash and its implementation of ActionScript :

1) Grab a big Adobe Flash project - you know, one that takes ten seconds to build.
2) Open it in Flash CS4.
3) Press Ctrl+Enter to run it in test mode.
4) Close the runner.
5) Press Ctrl+Enter to run it again, as if you just wanted to check out one more thing.

Guess what?

Adobe Flash is so stupid, that it doesn't notice that nothing has changed since the last build, and so it rebuilds the project, wasting more time.

And it doesn't seem to have any incremental build either. If you have a large project, and change one tiny thing ANYWHERE in the project, you face the entire laborious build process once again.

On a fast (3ghz QuadCore) computer, I am finding Flash makes debugging a major chore by making tedious to iteratively change and test.

Visual Studio in contrast? Do a debug run, and it will build and run. Run again without changing anything? It knows it doesn't need to rebuild, so it starts instantly. Change anything? It supports incremental build to a certain extent.

It makes Adobe Flash look like it comes from the 90s, or earlier. Except, that it's actually Adobe Flash CS4 - the very latest and greatest in 2009. Ouch - that sucks.

Oh - and I thought Visual Studio was bad, because the incremental build is actually quite limited. Turns out, Flash seems to have no incremental build at all.

And don't talk about load times - I thought Visual Studio load times were bad. But after Flash, it feels zippy.

And today, Flash crashed on me literally, hmmm, about ten times. I mean, crashed, dead, have to restart the app, and sorry about any unsaved work. That kind of crash.

Visual Studio is INCREDIBLY inefficient, but at least it hardly ever crashes. And Flash's inefficiencies make Visual Studio look like a racecar.

Add to this the documentation errors and erroneous compiler errors that define Flash 10 with ActionScript 3, and you have the perfect recipe for the most imperfect program I ever imagined could wear the Adobe name.

If it were a house, the "for sale" sign out front would say "full of potential".

Translation : it needs a LOT of work.

My bet?

Adobe will drop the ball (or continue to drop the ball).

SilverLight will win.

And it will take roughly 8 to 10 years to happen.