Initially you may think it’s not worth paying and that there are better free options, which is definitely a lie we once tried to live with. It has everything you may ever need in .NET world, code analysis and debugging works super well and all the SQL/noSQL related integrations are just next level compared to the competition. It’s worth every penny.
Over the course of months/years, various security exploits and other issues are discovered and patched in AIR, often requiring you to rebuild and resubmit mobile apps to the various storefronts. This happens often enough that it's worth mentioning as a major con.
While development on Adobe AIR seems to be fairly constant, there is very little communication between the community and Adobe regarding the future and general support of AIR. The track record of Flash (and particularly Flash Mobile) does not inspire much confidence that Adobe intends to support Flash/AIR for years to come.
Adobe AIR does not seem to perform as well (in terms of raw performance, memory usage, framerates, responsiveness, etc.) as other hybrid solutions for certain tasks. For example using shaders tends to be experimental still, and graphic/animation intensive projects often require the use of third party frameworks such as Starling.
Although Adobe AIR is just an SDK without an actual "UI" it's commonly used within Flash, Flash Builder, or FlashDevelop. Considering the integration with Flash IDE, there are very few tools that can compete with its features.
Rider is a great IDE with extensive C# refactoring support and .NET-specific knowledge. This is great for building .NET applications but for our purposes, the Unity specific suggestions are really helpful.
JetBrains Rider is great as an editing and debugging environment. It reliably connects to the Unity editor and allows debugging, which some IDEs are not as reliable at doing.
The support forums and knowledge base are extensive and the JetBrains support staff respond quickly to new posts and help resolve issues. There is also a publicly accessible issue tracking system, which allows you to stay on top of any bug fixes or enhancement requests.
Originally, Adobe AIR was the only game in town, and its blend of flexibility in platforms it could publish to (PC, Mac, iOS, Android), ease of use, and familiarity made it the clear choice. Now Adobe no longer supports it, and we’ve found the transition to Harmon unworkable for us.
Rider is hands down smoother and way less glitchy than Visual Studio Enterprise. There are way more refactoring capabilities and spell check so that your code is readable, maintainable, and easy to follow. Since Rider is cross-platform, our developers are no longer constrained to only using Windows. We can now get a familiar development environment across Mac, Windows, or Linux!
