2 really refreshing posts
Over the last couple of weeks the flash community has been hit with numerous blog posts on the new Apollo Alpha and CS3 launch, and I have to say I am just excited as everyone else. But there have been 2 posts that I really enjoyed that have hit home about why I love my job so much.
The first was from Guy Watson, who has been very quite over the last little while. In his post “Where Have I Been?, he explains his lack of visibility in the community. It was great to hear that one of the best Flash Developers over the last couple of years came to the realization that being the best isn’t all that there is to life, and that it is important to have balance. I have always felt this way, especially going through school. Could I have got straight A’s all the way through school? For sure I could, but I would have had to study WAY harder then I did and would have missed out on a lot of great experiences. I made the decision to have my education suffer a little so I could hang out with friends, go on road trips and play guitar, and I have no doubt in my mind that I would be a much different person today if I didn’t. And it’ s only been the last year or so that I have started to do this with work. When I first started my career as a Flash Developer 4 years ago I was really driven to be one of the best. I wanted to be on every beta program, speak at every conference, and hang out with all the other rockstars in the community - and I got do do some of that. But to be honest it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. Don’t get me wrong I love speaking and going to conferences but it’s for an entirely different reason then it used to be. It used to be about “look what I can do!”, but now it’s about going and meeting new people, teaching and just having fun. When I meet new people at conferences the first few questions are the typical where do you work, etc… and it’s more just so I can remember them or track them down later, but after that I would much rather talk about what they do when they aren’t working. “Where do you live? What’s it like there? Do you have any kids?” There is so much more to people then the latest open-source project that they have been working on. In fact when I interview people for positions at Fuel Industries there is 3 things I look for, and in this order. 1. Do you fit into our culture. 2. Are you passionate about what you do? 3. Talent and knowledge. You can have the most talented developer on your team but if they aren’t going to fit in then chances are it’s not going to work out. So with FiTC just a few weeks away, please hold me to this. If you see me let’s hang out, have a beer, and talk about how the Ottawa Senators are going to win the Cup and the Leafs are going to miss the playoffs for the second year in a row.
The second was from Aral Balkan. He has been going back and forth with Patrick Mineault about whether or not his new open-source project SWX is worth the trouble. But Aral’s post “SWX: Still a good idea“ made some great points on flash development that little to do with SWX. So forget the actual debate for a minute, because really how many people have actually used SWX yet? not me so I can’t comment one way or the other. The part of Aral’s post that I like the best was that developing in Flash is more often then not a hack, which I think is the best part of being a Flash Developer. I took a Multimedia Production Program at a community College where we didn’t learn a whole lot of programming. I have never taken a Computer Science course, I don’t know Java, any form of C, and have a very limited knowledge of server side development. But I can program in flash and I think I do a pretty good job at it. I’ve read books about design patterns and object oriented programming and all of the best practices articles out there. And they have all helped me a great deal in becoming the Flash Developer I am today. I try to plan as much in advance and write code as clean as I can, but if I have to use this._parent to make something work I am not ashamed to do it. Maybe it’s just the nature of the jobs that I work on that allow me to get away with this. At Fuel we don’t work on really any big RIA’s or have to integrate with anyone else, so there is usually no need to worry about overwriting someone else’s _global variables or prototype functions. Most of our jobs are one shot deals with quick turn arounds, and really does the client care that your referenced _root? As long as it works, is bug free and looks great that’s all they care about at the end of the day. And when I am trying to achieve something that I haven’t done before, like maybe a cool scripted animation, I totally hack it together in AS1 first to get it working, tear it down, rebuild, clean it up and then port it over to AS2. If I had to worry about all the “rules” when I sat down to do something I would get nowhere fast. So my advice is to read what you can and try to understand why and how things get built the way they do, and then find a solution that works for you.
So all that being said try not to get to wrapped up in everything the community throws at you. There are lots of great developers out there that have a lot of great things to say, listen to them and learn but don’t hold on to their every word. Do what works for you and go outside and enjoy the nice spring day.
