Programming Flex 3

A lot of software developers cut their teeth on learning COBOL, Pascal, or one of those other programming languages that have stuck around for years. I didn’t learn programming that way. I didn’t take computer science courses in school. I studied anthropology. Being a developer was not something I imagined I would ever do for a livi ng. I did enjoy creating graphics and building websites, though, and I supported myself through school doing just that. I found that I wanted to create some fancy animated content for a website, so I decided to spend a weekend and learn the Flash IDE. I was too cheap to buy a good book, so I spent a lot of time perusing the included documentation. Hours later, I figured out how to animate a line drawing I had made. Ecstatic, I dove through the documentation, learning more and more. What started as a weekend experiment turned into a weekly passion, as I slowly progressed from simple timeline animations into scripting. Flash was cool. I could take text and render it as a graphic, something I couldn’t do with regular old HTML and JavaScript (DHTML). It also empowered me to build applications on the Web that were not possible at the time with DHTML. I could get data from a remote computer such as the weather forecast and display it right in my Flash content, with complete control over the look and feel. I could have a user send an email through Flash without having to refresh the web page. I could display a photo gallery on my site, rotating the photos, adding borders, and making it look like a real photo album. I was hooked. As the language of Flash, ActionScript, matured, I grew along with it. I found that as my imagination led me to create richer experiences, the code I was required to write became more and more complex. No longer just scripting one-offs, I was learning real programming. I was pushing Flash beyond its limits and had to continually find ways of making my code more readable and maintainable. I found myself longing for a better way. ng. I did enjoy creating graphics and building websites, though, and I supported myself through school doing just that. I found that I wanted to create some fancy animated content for a website, so I decided to spend a weekend and learn the Flash IDE. I was too cheap to buy a good book, so I spent a lot of time perusing the included documentation. Hours later, I figured out how to animate a line drawing I had made. Ecstatic, I dove through the documentation, learning more and more. What started as a weekend experiment turned into a weekly passion, as I slowly progressed from simple timeline animations into scripting. Flash was cool. I could take text and render it as a graphic, something I couldn’t do with regular old HTML and JavaScript (DHTML). It also empowered me to build applications on the Web that were not possible at the time with DHTML. I could get data from a remote computer such as the weather forecast and display it right in my Flash content, with complete control over the look and feel. I could have a user send an email through Flash without having to refresh the web page. I could display a photo gallery on my site, rotating the photos, adding borders, and making it look like a real photo album. I was hooked. As the language of Flash, ActionScript, matured, I grew along with it. I found that as my imagination led me to create richer experiences, the code I was required to write became more and more complex. No longer just scripting one-offs, I was learning real programming. I was pushing Flash beyond its limits and had to continually find ways of making my code more readable and maintainable. I found myself longing for a better way.