I am writing this as I head out to the Esri Dev Summit in Palm Springs, CA. Its been a few years since I have been able to attend so I’m looking forward to a week of learning and interaction with other Esri developers.
Things have changed in the past few years. SilverlightFlex has been replaced by HTML5 and native runtime applications and Esri in particular have focused on Devices.
In the mobile world the company I work for (TCT) has focused on using ArcGIS Engine. Its the platform that made sense for our primary customer base of Utilities.
Things are changing though and Runtime for WPF is a viable platform especially when you consider the Offline capabilities that will be available by summer.
Like many other software companies we have heavily invested in ArcGIS Engine over the years. Things like standard controls for viewing attributes and helper functions to make using the API for our needs easier. This same investment has to be repeated for ArcGIS Runtime. Doing this is welcome as it is the life of a software developer but it also lets us re-think how we do things based on what we have learned over the years.
I look forward to talking with people and seeing what everyone is up to.
John Selkirk 