So, what is the platform of choice for folks who want to create interactive graphical educational software (see for example all the stuff at PHET and NLVM). Currently, there are two primary options: Flash and Java Applets. I’m not covering in this post web applications, which can still use just about anything you want: PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, .NET, etc., or business/office/administrative software which can either be web apps or desktop apps coded in C++/Java/.NET/Python, etc., or 3D desktop games, usually coded in C++/Java/.NET/Python. I’m centered on interactive, graphical educational software like you see all over the web now.
The PHET project, for example, uses both java and flash. This has not always been the case, however, and I suspect it will change again in the near future. Here’s a short history of some of the development tools I’ve leaned on for educational software development over the past 15 years:
- early 90s – hypercard / supercard, Perl/CGI for web apps
- late 90s – java, visual basic, real basic, PHP emerges for web apps, javascript in the browser
- early 00s – by this time, commercial options no longer cut it for me, too many bugs, ignored feature requests, too expensive – free and open source is king: python, java (later open sourced), C#/vb.net (esp. the Mono open source clone). Unfortunately there is no alternative to the commercial, proprietary flash, which becomes king of RIAs (rich internet applications) instead of java applets.
- late 00s – by this time, desktop apps no longer cut it. RIA is king for creating interactive graphical educational apps – java and JVM languages like scala, and still no real alternative to flash. But the move to RIA means no more Mono/.NET since it doesn’t run in the browser – support for silverlight is weak/non-existent on many browsers/platforms. And no python, although perhaps one day perhaps browsers will support it as an alternative language to javascript. Mono/.NET is emerging again now in 3D virtual world space, however, because it is the basis for Second Life / OpenSim, and it’s only open source competitor, the java-based Project Wonderland is no longer supported by Oracle, who bought out Sun. The project is continuing outside of Oracle, but it’s future is unclear.
- early and late 10s? – This is the question of this post. Mobile platforms can no longer be ignored, and that means no java. Actually android is essentially java (dalvik), but standard java applets do not work. Flash is only just now being ported to work on android, and its future on the iphone platform is unclear although it has been ported, apparently. Thanks to google not supporting applets (even android applets), and Apple wanting total control of their platform, Flash is only increasing its dominance and importance.
HTML5
Since Oracle bought out Sun, and there is no support nor any planned support for java on the android and iphone platforms, it appears the only open source alternative for the future of RIA apps may be HTML5. But that cannot be used for creating the kind of highly interactive graphical educational software that you can create in java and flash. For this to work in HTML5, it would require WebGL, a 3D (OpenGL ES) canvas for HTML5. WebGL still does not work on any mobile platform, but it has been or is being ported to work on WebKit (the browser engine for Palm’s WebOS and the iphone web browser) as well as android. Here are some more resources on WebGL:
- Learning WebGL – blog
- Vladimir Vukićević, blog of the main developer for the canvas control, and porting it to android. He did similar work on the mono platform earlier.
- Blender to WebGL exporter
The main drawback to the HTML5 platform is that javascript is the only language supported. That’s not a problem for me, personally, I’ve been using javascript since when it was called livescript. But my interest also is in programming languages/tools that make it easier for students, teachers, and other non-CS types to develop interactive educational software, as discussed in this chapter (pdf). A workaround for now would be to create a to-javascript compiler for alternate languages, as has already been done for java with the GWT project, but in the long run it would be best if a common runtime were developed for WebKit and Firefox to support other languages than javascript, but then we are just re-inventing java and the JVM. So I don’t dismiss the java platform at all just yet, but it’s definitely not having a good year so far 
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