The "real" impact of XPages

Based on the IBM Dublin workshop Tim, Matt and myself created the materials for the famous XPages workshop that ran in Hursley and Bejing (and is planned for other locations early 2009). One comment by a participant summed up the impact of XPages on Notes (yes it's coming for the client) and Domino:
"I was afraid that my lack of experience with the Lotus environment would prove to be a burden during the session, but it has not. On the contrary it might even have been an advantage (emphasis mine) , having experienced the workshop with clear eyes (if you will) not trying to apply old routines. It has been difficult to accept drag & drop and the "what you see is what you get" concept of developing. Coming from normally developing in a simple text editor basically. But it's quick effective and if there's any need to goof around with the source, the option is there. I think I will definitely embrace XPages and hopefully with the knowledge I've gained this week, have my colleagues do the same. (They are all Lotus fanatics anyway :) )"
A lot of our customers cite difficulties to find enough Lotus developers. With XPages Domino you develop in JavaScript end-to-end. These skills are much more readily available. Of course you need to learn the object model, but at least you get away with a single language.