In what is becoming an ever more popular move for those working on Java client technologies, Hans Muller, the now former CTO for Sun's Desktop division, made the move from Sun Microsystems to Adobe’s Flex team this week. He announced the career change on the Swing Application Framework mail list:
After nearly 21 years, I'm leaving Sun Microsystems. I'm moving to Adobe, to work on Flex, starting Monday May 12th.Earlier in the year, Chet Haase, a former Sun engineer and co-author of Filthy Rich Clients, made the move to Adobe’s Flex SDK team. Saying in February:
One of the things that attracted me to Flex, and to Adobe, was a client platform that enables very rich user experiences; transitions, animations, filters, and just darned good-looking UIs are all pretty exciting to this graphics geek.Dion Almaer discussed Hans' move on his blog post, “Sun is bleeding; More engineers leave as JavaFX is pimped:”
Well, more heavy hitting engineers are leaving. When the CTO of the client division moves on (to Adobe again, no less), we yet again have a reason to wonder what is happening at Sun.He continues by setting Hans' move against the context of current events:
It is ironic that the exodus of talent has happened at the same time as Sun promotes JavaFX at JavaOne.What is the InfoQ community to make of major Java players moving on from Sun, particularly to Adobe? Will these moves put JavaFX even further behind Adobe Flex?