I've written about how I think that web applications are a hack. In that post I didn't think Silverlight was fully the answer, but at this point I think it's the best alternative.
I couldn't be more strongly in favor of using Silverlight for web applications (as opposed to web sites which only provide content) wherever possible. Of course even content can be a good use of Silverlight as the NYT reader shows. If an MS shop's target audience doesn't include IT goons who somehow put Silverlight in a different category than Acrobat Reader, I don't think you have any other choice for new applications.
My coworkers are spending many hours trying to make one AJAX codebase work on different browsers. After awhile it just gets demoralizing (and my employer is wasting tons of maintenance time). My mind is boggled by all the hackage necessary to make AJAX popup "windows" drag/drop via HTML (sure Javascript makes it happen, but it's still just HTML). With Silverlight you're working on a platform designed for this kind of thing. It's designed for dragging and dropping and animations and all the other things needed for applications (not to mention streaming).
Yes, you can make all those things happen with Javascript, and I fully understand the power of functional languages, but who would rather maintain a line of business application written in Javascript in favor of C#? Not to mention the aforementioned ever growing browser compatibility issues.
How do loosely typed Javascript objects compare with full featured Silverlight controls with UI and logic contained in one distinct entity combined with design time configuration? Not very well on the maintainability scale.
That's how I cast my vote, anyway. Long live Silverlight. I doubt it will be a technology that fades away, but I hope it's user base grows and it continues to stay healthy in the future.
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