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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.
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Hey RJ,
You're right these are some exciting time to be a RIA developer. Thermo is going to be good but you are right, us developers are going to lose alot of work because of it, which isn't that bad I guess.
One thing though When Thermo and Flex 4.0 comes out it means that to stand out in the RIA community it is going to only get harder. First in best dressed.
His "without ever having to write a line of code" is a bit dubious. It may not be ActionScript, but it is nevertheless code.
Apart from that this seems really promising.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing, Theo. :) Thermo will probably still be capable of writing all of the mxml he has there though, so designers probably won't have to write a line of code.