We previously approached this argument from 2 sides: .NET developer and Flash developer. However, maybe that's not the most appropriate perspective on this issue.

I recently came across this discussion (started back in May 2007 but still active as of a week ago) at the Silverlight.net forums. What interested me right away was that the initial poster is a .NET developer. He was asking the Silverlight community for reasons to use Silverlight instead of Flex and specifically looking for "concrete value-add" after he was come up dry of reasons himself. Unfortunately, it largely turned into a flame war after Ted piped up and stated the facts about the Flex side. In the end, I'm not sure much was gained in terms of the initial question (feel free to read it as there are some interesting points made), but it did reinforce something in my mind.

Ever since MS released Silverlight, most of the discussion around Silverlight and Flash has been related to which is the better technology and whether one will win out at the demise of the other. Unfortunately, the argument has revolved largely around programming languages and runtimes and development environments rather than the real issue at hand...ROI for the client.

When we distill it down to the basics of why we do what we do, it all comes down to ROI. After all, that's the reason why we all have projects to work on isn't it? The client is willing to pay money for something that will benefit their company. Breaking that down further, I see 2 basic factors (related to developers like us) affecting ROI:

1. User experience & brand awareness

Obviously, we're all trying to build things in such a way that the user will have a positive experience. The type of experience may vary depending on the goal of the project. For example, an online hotel booking system needs to allow a potential customer to quickly find rooms available for specific dates, with specific parameters, and then follow through with the booking and payment. A microsite for a car manufacturer needs to allow the customer to experience the car and entice them to become emotionally involved with it through the senses. All the while, UI controls need to be intuitive and work like the user expects them to. These are things we strive for as developers.

To that end, if a technology supports a greater feature set, there may be more options to the client in terms of building that experience. For example, being able to adjust bitmap color would allow customizing a product's color. Support for 3D would allow the user to interact with the "virtual" product similar to the way they would the physical product. Integration of rich charting components allows interesting ways for users to visualize data. However, this has nothing to do with AS vs. C# or FlexBuilder vs. Visual Studio. Those distinctions mean nothing to the end user. Also, just because a technology supports more features doesn't necessarily mean they are the *right* features for the project.

In the end, the goal is generally to make a sale or make the user more aware of a brand in a positive way, which may result in a sale (or something intangible like the influence over choices that a user makes) in the future . If the user has a good experience while using the app you've built, regardless of Flash or Silverlight, you've done your part.

2. Development process

This is the piece where we get a lot of passionate discussion about how one technology is better than the other. MS developers are very passionate about their tools, languages and processes. I think Flash & Flex developers are as well, though maybe not to the same degree. But again, let's not lose our focus. For someone to hail their technology as king because it uses a specific language is meaningless. What's important is the ability for a developer to utilize that technology to build what they need to build quickly and intelligently (simplified yes, but that's the general goal).

The key here is efficiency of the development process. In the end, that's what affects the client's bottom line. To make a blanket statement that Visual Studio and C# is better than FlexBuilder and AS doesn't make sense (nor does the opposite argument). However, if you have a team of developers who have honed their process in a given platform, then it would make sense to build using that platform. That's why it does make sense for .NET developers to jump into Silverlight. But to say that Silverlight is better than Flash just because it implements a subset of the .NET framework is again a misguided response. To reiterate, what is the value-add for the client in that statement?

Conclusion

So where does this leave us? Unfortunately, I think the question of whether one technology is better than the other will continue to live on despite the fact that it's not really the right question. Don't get me wrong...I'm a Flash developer at heart and probably will be for a long time, and am passionate about it as most of you are. However, instead of wasting our energies bickering with the "other side", let's use that passion to build better "stuff" and push Adobe and MS to continue developing the tools we need to do that.