Goodbye Flex, Hello Ruby on Rails

Question

Adobe announced it is halting development of Flash Player for mobile in the browser, but it will continue support for AIR on mobile devices.
Will Flex survive long term? I have my doubts.
I'll still develop my skills in Flex and see what happens with Flex 5, but I'll also start studying Ruby on Rails, which I actually dislike because it seems so obscure, but there are more jobs in RoR and I hear the pay rates are better.
Good job Adobe. Glad to see you're able to get the job done! Not.

Answer 1

Today has been tough on all of us, first Heavy D dies, then Joepa retires from my alma mater, now this.
I understand your angst, I'm a little worried too.  But I do have this to say, Adobe has shown a sense of urgency in adapting to the changing sands.  For instance, they released Adobe Edge for free which I feel was a feeler for HTML 5. They have stepped up the release cycle going from Flex sdk 4.0->4.5->4.5.1, each step along the way incorporating more items making mobile development easier.  They realize that the landscape is changing, and theat the tech world doesn't have alot of time for people who insist on doing things the old way. 
Does Flash have some "issues", yeah, it does and quite a few even disregarding security issues.  I dodge some websites (I'm looking at you CNN) like the cops because I know that my browser will lock up like a big block chevy at 6000 rpm with no oil.
Now lets look at Adobe as a company, what advantages does it have.  The first is that is has a headlock on the creative side of things.  It doesn't matter whether the software is pirated, borrowed, or stolen, if you want to do design work, you are going to get a CS family piece of software.  This gives them a very firm launching point for other technologies and a market place presence.  So even if Flex/Flash does become a technological ghost, there will still be other technologies and frameworks to avenge it.
My last point is, who on earth is doing well in this new world software or hardware ?  Can we all bow our heads while we do a casualty count:
JavaFX:  Didn't even make it to the battlefield.  They couldn't transition from the Swing/AWT wars of the late 90's. Such a bad taste was left in developers mouths, they swore to never work with any frontend tech from Sun where the designers were replaced with engineers.
Silverlight: Managed to coerce, beat, threaten , extort Netflix into using their tech.  They weren't really able to expand past that and are expected to be put down like Old Yeller.
Blackberry Playbook:  They didn't stock their first tablet offering with email and calendar. For their insolence, they were rewarded with 3.3% market share.  It doesn't help that as of late, their products have been met with the same excitement one would find at a wake.
HP Touchpad:  No one really knows what is going on with HP, not even the Board of Directors.  I got a Touchpad, threw Cyanogenmod on it and went to work, was a great deal for the price.  An also ran in the big scheme of things, especially since they are playing musical chairs with their CEO position and business plans.
So when we compare the techs that left the gate, it appears that getting to today and still having a pulse puts you in elite company.
Message was edited by: UbuntuPenguin