Sproutcore vs Silverlight vs Flash

Posted by Vaughan on Jun 18, 2008 in Flash, Silverlight | 1 comment

The three way battle begins… or never start, ever.  Apple is getting plenty of coverage recently on their love for Sproutcore, but I can’t see where the hype factor is really finding justifcation, other than the hype factory.  A Javascript framework for MVC isn’t going to compete with the rich animation tools that Adobe already has, and the pipeline that Microsoft is reaching with Silverlight.  Javascript is cool, but it is not a selling point.  Sproutcore might have some shiny features out of the box, but true open standards are already being offered in many forms, including Google’s GWT.  How one would do video streaming via Javascript starts to hurt my brain.

Javascript is an exteremely powerful language, and for products such as Sproutcore and Silverlight, it is a great thing.  I questioned it in Silverlight initially, but came to love the Javascript support.  Rather than being proprietary, it opens the door to so many more businesses who can not step into the realm of Flash due to lack of skills and toolsets within their delivery teams.  With Silverlight 2 just around the corner, you will be able to take an array of languages that have excellent application building tools, even allowing Ruby could power your applications front and back, with Silverlight as the glue.  These languages have a solid history, experienced developers, MVC frameworks, mature tools, and online communities.

Of course the main place Sproutcore is going to be exciting for Apple, adding ease of development, and more depth to browser applications, is on the iPhone.  In general the current selection of iPhone applications are good.  Not great, not cool, just good.  But writing iPhone applications is cool.  With the cool factor driving development and innovation, Sproutcore applications written for iPhone are likely targets for the Nokias and LGs in the market. 

Could it be that the ultimate mobile combo a Silverlight RIA front end with a Sproutcore MVC driving it in the background?  Only if banner advertising is brought to you by Flash.