One of my colleagues at CIO.com, Chris Lynch, is planning to write an article about the ways that developers are affected by newer kinds of app design and development. If indeed there IS a change. He and I have questions; we don't necessarily know the answers. That's why we ask people for input!

Sure, you might have been writing web apps and web services apps for years... but plenty of them have been in-house, on servers you host yourself. And they haven't necessarily been tied to social networks (such as apps that interact with Facebook).

So Chris asked me if I could ask some developers I know a few questions. Any help you can give us would be really helpful.

* If you have worked on a platform that builds on-premise enterprise apps, has it been easy to make the transition to SaaS-based platforms, such as the Force.com?

* What do you see as the upside to SaaS-based development platforms? What are the downsides (as compared to ones for building on-premise apps)?

* Will the emergence of development platforms for SaaS apps affect your overall job security and viability? How?

Thanks in advance. Private responses are cool, too; drop a line to me at [moderator note: asking for private responses is against Daniweb rules].

Esther Schindler
senior online editor, CIO.com