FlashCanon Flash Platform stuff from Jason Fincanon

I learned to program in Flash

— WARNING —
This post may come across a little harsh, make me sound angry, produce some new enemies or even turn you off to the idea of ever doing work with me, but please remember to take it with a grain of salt as I am just one man with a small gripe to get off his chest.
— WARNING —

I don’t typically like to write “rant” posts, but there’s something that has really started to grate at my developer nerves lately and I need to get it out there. When I stepped into Flash back in ‘98/’99, I had no idea that it would end up being the main tool at the base of my career. You see, I graduated from The Art Institute of Dallas with a degree in 3D Animation and wanted to end up working for someone like Pixar or any other similar company. Well, as we all know, most people don’t come directly out of college and go into that dream job and I was no exception. I got a job that introduced me to Flash and I started learning it… first with simple tweens and animations and then on to this thing called ActionScript. This brings me to my point: I learned to program in ActionScript as opposed to some other “real” programming language. So what should bother me about that? There’s LOTS of old school Flash guys and gals out there that learned the same way, right? And together we helped Macromedia (and Adobe) grow the Flash Platform into what it is today, right?

A lot of developers that I’ve met who come from a background with “real” programming languages (C#, Java, etc.) and who have computer science degrees have long looked down upon us lowly ActionScript developers because ActionScript was considered a joke and not a real language. However, we kept our skin thick and persevered despite their condescending attitudes and attempts at programmer insults. But now things have changed. Now we have ActionScript 3. Now we have Flex 2, 3 and soon 4. And now we have those same developers migrating over. WHICH IS GREAT except for one thing… many of them still want to tell us how we’re “doing it all wrong” and then, in the same breath, ask us how to complete a given task in ActionScript. Here’s an idea: Let’s all learn from each other and let’s keep a mutual respect for each others’ training, knowledge and backgrounds.

Something else that’s more amusing than frustrating to me is that I still hear some of them complain about Flash and/or ActionScript in such ways as to make me want to ask them why they are working with it if they hate it so much. “Jason, why does Flash work this way? It’s really wrong and really messed up…. Jason, I can’t believe ActionScript doesn’t have a ______ method! Why doesn’t it have a ______ method like the language in which I learned to program? This is all wrong and really messed up.” To those I answer: Call Adobe or check out bugs.adobe.com.

Anyway, before I finish up on this post, I feel like I should add that I DO realize that I’m generalizing a bit here. I know that not all traditional developers are this way and I also know that the teams at Adobe who actually produce these products most likely come from these backgrounds. However, I’ve seen and heard so much of it lately that I just wanted to bring it up. And now I’ll move on and get back to thickening my skin again.

I learned to program in Flash and

• I don’t have a computer science degree
• I write BOTH procedural AND object oriented code
• I use the timeline when needed (animation and/or code)
• Design patterns are not my #1 priority

Thanks for reading.
The comments are open.

This ain’t your daddy’s Flash

I was having a discussion with someone today who said, in no uncertain terms, that he despises Flash. I found myself taking that in an odd sort of personal way. He doesn’t like some of the “crap” that he sees out there and some of the sites that are just clunky and overloaded with “non-functional movement” and “pointless animations.” As we in the Flash community know, Flash has long been more than just a tool to create pointless little animations. It has grown in so many ways that I can’t even start to list them here. I started explaining some of the magical powers of ActionScript and thumbed through a couple of my books with him to show him just a few strengths. [Quick book plug... Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move! by Keith Peters (awesome!)] Anyway, after showing and explaining to him where Flash has gone over the years, I think I turned him completely around (that, or he just wanted to get away from me).

I think that for those of us who work/build/create with Flash, that kind of thing can be very frustrating to hear from someone. So frustrating for me that I felt the need to write this post about the subject right away. I feel that a part of my responsibilities as a Flash Developer is to inform others outside of the Flash community about these kind of things. The problem I find myself running into is that it’s hard to engage people in that conversation if they are not in the field. Take this post for example. I can type until I’m blue in the… um… fingers, but who’s reading this? Most likely, people in the Flash community who already know all about this issue and frustration. To that end, I think I’m going to do some brainstorming to find ways to get this information outside of the Flash talking groups and into the world of the people I’ll go ahead and call “civilians” because I like to use that word to describe “other” people.

I’m not sure how I’m going to do it. I’m not sure where I’m going to do it. I really don’t know who will even listen, but I’m going to get the word out if I have to tie people down to chairs in conference rooms and give them hour-long presentations on the extreme power that Flash has grown into. At least that’s what I WANT to do. Hopefully, I won’t end up giving up just to go sit on the couch and wait for the next episode of “Lost.”