Remember this post Count that as the most popular post ever on my blog (so much for a positive post being my watermark). Anyway Doron Yaacoby has followed up almost a year and a half later with another look at where ESRI has taken the Web ADF since then.
Almost none of the issues I addressed in my original post were fixed. The API is still overly complex. Resources, functionalities and all these so-called abstractions remain in place, emphasizing the strength of the JavaScript API’s simplicity. And yes, there are still about a billion classes that are named ‘Converter’ in the API. It seems like ESRI insists that you write the entire namespace before every class you use.
Yea that was probably predictable, but I don’t think any of it matters. We’ve all moved beyond the Web ADFs and on to the REST APIs (Flex, JavaScript and Silverlight). Really though I’m amazed at how much our web development platform has changed in that time, we all can agree developing with ESRI is much more enjoyable than it was and I’m wagering most of us forget there is a Web ADF out there anymore. I can’t wait until the ESRI UC to see what the future holds in store.
