Ely Greenfield has a great video up on Adobe TV demoing some of the new features related to designer/developer workflow that will be coming in Flex 4 and Thermo. I've embedded a small version at the end, but click this link to check out the real version on Adobe TV.

This presentation is similar to the "Flex Roadmap" presentation Ely gave at MAX last year, which was inspiration for Ben Stucki's Open Flux project.

Among other things, Ely demonstrates new "viewless" controls in Flex 4 which will make the built-in component set much more flexible. If you imagine Thermo writing all the MXML code he types, you can imagine just how powerful Designers are going to be in the next generation of Flex development.

I have to admit that as a developer, this all kind of scares me. :) I know it's going to result in increased speed and better applications, but I really LIKE doing all of this skinning stuff right now, and I'd hate to lose all of that work to designers. I'm the one Juan Sanchez references in his post here.

Juan makes some good points though. Thermo won't do everything - complex 3d components are just one example. We developers should be freed up to develop deeper and richer custom components and get to focus more time on making the really wild stuff and less time customizing lists and buttons. I just hope no one looks at this and thinks we should be relegated to nothing but back-end development and integration, as fun as that stuff is.

Regardless of what we wind up doing, Flex 4 is really going to shake things up. These are exciting times to be alive, my friends.