Technology wars have a tendency of getting a little bit fanatical sometimes. I clearly remember the Unix vs Windows war, the OSI vs TCP war and many such wars that have unfolded before me and have even sucked me in as a foot soilder at times. To set the record straight, I was, am and will an Unix enthusiast until Windows becomes Open Source. (Yea, and cows might fly!) .Net in my view was never really at war with JEE from a paradigm point of view as much as it was a ploy for getting greater market share. And to tell the truth Visual Studio.net and custom controls were killer introductions. With .net 3 and 3.5 my residual resentment towards this framework has evaporated and I would recommend .net for any application besides contolling the auto pilot function of a plane that I am inside.

The war the I am watching with interest right now is the AJAX versus Flex. Let's face it the days of plain ol' JSP/ASP/ASPX are gone. Intelligence in the client is the need of the hour. Flex and AJAX have very different ways of filling this need. While Flex is a true blue RIA which appears in your browser as an dainty .swf file that packs quite a punch, Ajax is based on plain Java Script, XML and asynchornicity. Which would I choose? Well like they teach us so well in school the answer is: it depends! :) But depends on what? Well on a bunch of things: audience and client capabilities, bandwidth availability, server technology and most importantly on timelines and how fast can you get your team to ramp up.

Right now I am in middle of a decision making process on which these to use. Wonder of wonders, my MOSSy delivery platform is Sharepoint 2007. Hold your breath while I take out a coin and toss ;)