Pete,

Very interesting. Good to see those numbers going up, and Silverlight is almost as high as Flex. Of course there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, but hopefully we're on the right track.

Bill

Interesting how you rigged the query to put Flex is a bad light compared to WPF/Silverlight. Here's what the numbers should really look like:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=flex%2C+silverlight%2C+javafx%2C+openlaszlo%2C+wpf&l=

Flex absolutely DOMINATES the current RIA market. Silverlight is a non-solution for anyone serious about supporting non-Windows platforms effectively. Flex/Flash has a great cross-platform solution.

-Bryan

@Bryan I didn't rig the query as I didn't even come up with it. I also don't think Flex is shown in a bad light there at all.

The point was not to show any competition between the three. In fact, while the query you showed has much higher results, they're declining. Which one shows Flex in a better light? Higher but declining, or lower and rising?

There's no doubt Flex/Flash dominate RIA. They've been out much longer and have a huge installed base and developer base. Silverlight is in Beta 2.

Don't go looking for people poking at Flex :) There's room enough for Flash, Flex, Air, Silverlight, WPF. The RIA space as a whole is growing.

Pete

"Flex developer," which gets slightly more hits than "Adobe Flex," shows about 0.08% of posted jobs, putting it just above "fortran" and well below "cobol." "Java developer" is about 1%. A meteoric rise to 0.08% translates to pretty much no job market.

To make it worse, most jobs that match "Flex" list it as a 2nd or 3rd level skill, so they are not really Flex development positions, or they list Flex/Flash and really mean a Flash developer.

I love Flex and made a big investment in it, but I just don't see the job market right now for Flex developers. However, I don't think this says anything about adoption of Flex because I think enterprises are doing it from the inside out.

Keep in mind that the word "Flex" often appears in job ads in relation to "Flex time", which is presumably why the original tweet with the url specified "adobe flex"

These are all just statistics anyway, pulled from one site. I wouldn't read anything from them other than *perhaps* broad industry trends, as I was originally trying to do :)

Pete