I am joining Sencha to build a world-class developer program but in a larger sense I am returning to the intersection of Applications and The Open Web. I wanted to share my thoughts on why I am returning to web technologies and highlight some industry trends that are rapidly driving change within the software industry.
I believe that we are witnessing a sea-change in the platforms upon which software is built and delivered. Long term, I believe all software will be built with web technologies across enterprise and consumer facing applications.
Here are a few trends driving this change:
1. Web Innovation – Browsers and the core fabric of web technologies are innovating rapidly again. CSS, JS, HTML are changing to enable running first class applications in the browser with no dependencies.
2. Web Performance – The performance of web technologies has eclipsed end user performance requirements. JavaScript performance has improved dramatically in the past 3 years and browser rendering performance is in most browsers now leveraging the GPU for rendering. Fast code and fast graphics are essential elements to building great end user experiences.
3. Computing Cost & Capability – The ecosystem surrounding ARM is lowering hardware costs while delivering exponential performance growth in mobile and will soon engulf desktop and server markets.
4. Touch – Sensors for touch both physical and virtual (Kinect) are enabling simpler UI across devices.
5. Native Capacity – Few companies have the team capacity to deliver native applications across multiple platforms successfully. I am seeing many developers leverage web technologies within native applications to simplify development and reuse existing content, servers, and services.
6. Utility Computing – Services are changing how software is created, sold, and deployed server-side.
7. Mobile – Everyone will have a browser in their pocket… Everyone!
Now while the trends and market opportunity seems crystal clear, the reality is there are actually very few companies actively delivering “professional grade” web technology solutions that “just work”. Sencha stood out for me for a few reasons:
1. Team – An exceptional team with world class leadership and focus.
2. Opportunity - The Intersection of Applications and The Open Web
3. Customers - Read the list, it speaks volumes.
4. Products - Professional engineering teams building high quality frameworks, tools, and services for developers.
I am very excited to join Sencha to build a world-class developer program and to return to investing in web technologies full time. Exciting times ahead!
Cheers,
Ted 
I’d never heard of Sencha until now. Seeing Adobe in the customer list is interesting from a competition pov. Good luck.
Congrats Ted! Hopefully our paths will cross again soon. Sencha + Heroku = FUN
I follow your work since the old times (not so far) of onFlex and I’m anxious to see the next posts about ExtJS / Sencha framework.
Congrats, Looking forward to seeing more about Sencha Ted.
Interesting, after you announced leaving B&N, Sencha was one of my guesses. Internally, we have different feelings about the current state of HTML/JS. We exited development of HTML/JS frameworks about 6 years ago after developing similar environment with one major handicap – it would support one browser only. As JS/browsers caught up with functionality, Victor is pulling strongly toward ExtJS and I am looking for enterprise grade solutions over lighter frameworks. Can’t wait for your opinions/posts on the subject.
Sincerely,
Anatole
Congrats Ted!! Sencha is growing , cool!!
Welcome to Sencha Ted!! Very excited to have you here!
I am thrilled to be joining such a great company and team. Honored, is the best word I can find for it. Ted
Congratulations! Do you expect something like Sencha AS, conceptually similar to Sencha GWT, but leveraging ActionScript and MXML to build HTML web applications using Sencha component set?
Sergey, I expect that I am going to be very busy and will be learning a ton. I would take a look at coffeescript, it is closer to ruby/python but pre-compiles to pure js and provides some productive syntactic sugar to speed development.
There’s a jangaroo based project called Ext AS located on github: https://github.com/CoreMedia/jangaroo-tools/wiki/Ext-AS
Could be interesting.
BTW: There’s also an intelliJ jangaroo plugin. Haven’t tried it until now but I guess I’ll give it a shot.
Congrats !
Welcome Ted! Looking forward to working with you.
Congratulations, Ted! I know you would build awesome community around Sencha.
-abdul
Congrats… to Sencha
Best,
Burak
Sounds like a great fit, Ted. Sencha’s a cool company, and you’re just the guy to build a superlative developer program. Congrats!
Super excited to hear the news, Ted. I know that Aditya is thrilled to have you aboard and excited to see what you two build going forward.
Long time Flash dev here,
When Flash first had it’s brush with death back when Silverlight was herald as the Flash killer I found myself scared, angry and nervous. When Apple chose to keep Flash off ios devices I felt the same way. When Adobe announced that Flash for mobile was no longer going to be developed, again I felt the same way. It was an emotional reaction I was having, I was afraid I would no longer be able to do what I love. I now realize that I don’t love Flash, I love what Flash makes it easy to do, develop Rich Media Experiences. Here’s to wishing you the best and I look forward to seeing how far you and Sencha can push it’s Tools.
Congrats on the new gig Ted.
This is great, I switched to EstJS 4 (from Flex) and it’s great to be on the same path with you again.
Hi Ted!
I have a “general question” about http://pages.sencha.com/flex-to-sencha-roadshow.html
Just to make it simple, what is the purpose to migrate from Flex to Sencha?
I can get it for mobile solutions, but you have a specific product to target mobile platforms and that is fine.
But when it comes to desktop browsers, what the benefit of migrating from Flex to Sencha?
No doubt, I like your framework, but again, what is the purpose of migration, particularly existing products, and event new developments?
The fact that it will “work somehow” on mobile devices is not an argument as for me, because in my opinion any commercial product targeting mobile should have an interface optimized for mobile, not just “working fairly well”.
Regards, Sergey.
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