An interesting question I woke up with this morning stirring through my thoughts. I think partially due to yesterday’s Adobe MAX keynote. Partially due to the HTML5 vs. Flash debates. Partially due to the recent state of where we are in computing and development in general. Partially due to the most recent round of Flash “killer” conversations, etc.

I think in one word being a Flash Platform Developer, being a part of the Flash Platform Community is “passion”.

Not passion for just development, the language, the Flash Player or even Adobe. Passion to seek and explore new levels of creativity. Passion to become a better developer. Passion to bush boundaries and ourselves. Passion for each other. Passion for building cool stuff. Cool stuff that changes the way people view and use computers and the Internet.

Flash has a long history. It’s been around for a while. Along with it there’s always been the community. I think a lot of the people who got involved in the beginning were artists and designers. True creatives. People that saw an opportunity to express their ideas in ways that no one had ever imagined or realized. This resulted in some of the early WHAO experiences on the web. The jaw dropping, inspirational experiences such as the first time we saw Gabocorp. The early work of Joshua Davis and Colin Moock. Mario Klingemann and Keith Peters. The Friends Of Ed Flash Masters books. If you’ve been around since the beginning then you know the importance and significance of these digital pioneers and what their contributions mean. If you don’t I urge you to take a moment and take a walk through memory lane. Long before social media, long before HTML5, long before iPhones, tablets and Mobile, long before Adobe even was a part of Flash (yeah Macromedia FTW!).

Back then if, memory serves me, we had blogs, Flashkit and the Flashcoders list. That’s about it. I think a beautiful thing came from the early pioneers and these resources of communication though. What’s become know as “The Flash Platform Community.” I can’t remember when we even started calling it that to be honest. Pretty sure we didn’t back then. I think it was pretty much just called Flashcoders. It was a handful of truly innovative artists communicating with each other and sharing ideas and code. Important word there, “sharing.” I think that’s another huge part of being a Flash Platform Developer. Since the early days we’ve always had each other’s backs. Back then if you had an issue you’d post to Flashkit and/or Flashcoders and then wait. Usually for a day or more to receive and answer, or a tidbit of information to help you move along. I think a lot of us were learning about programming from the start back then. Not only were we pushing the boundaries visually and interactively but also in the way  code was written. We were using a program intended for animation to program. If you stop and think about it for a minute that’s pretty crazy. Artists writing code, in an animation program. Wait, what…? We changed history.

It also makes sense that the community was born. Artists are pretty passionate people. So I think my original statement stands as I write through all of this. The birth of the community was due to a lot of factors, where we were in computing, the state of the Internet at the time, the creation of Flash itself, and the adoption of the Flash Player in the web browser. I think the most we had for animation back then, other than Flash, was animated GIFs. Oh, and Java applets of course! Unless you count the marquee and blink tags, oh, oh! and the JavaScript status scrollers!! There really wasn’t anything that existed that could be used to create truly immersive, animated, interactive experiences. (Well there was Directory but the Shockwave player never caught one like Flash Player did. I think Authorware also had a player, but that’s a whole other story…)

So there we were. A handful of creatives, working in the field of web design/develop. Churning out websites with HTML, tabels, spacer GIFs, et al. Downloading copious amounts of music from Napster, hacking HTML during the day and experimenting with Flash at night. Most of us anyway. It was a rare and cherished opportunity to work with Flash full time at a job back then.) Hacking away at ActionScript on the timeline nested within Movie Clips. I remember showing the actual IDE/dev side to “programmers” back then. Their response was priceless. It didn’t really matter though. We were pushing the envelope and people were amazed at the visual appeal that resulted. Think about the first time you saw the 2Advanced website. I think we all went and attempted to replicate either the entire site or at least pieces of it. Behind the scenes there were a handful of us all communicating on Flashkit and Flashcoders. Every day. Another important word there “communicating.” The birth of the Flash Platform Community.

Did we know what we were doing? Probably not. Both in terms of “programming” and in terms of creating the community. I don’t really think any of this was planned or premeditated. It evolved over time. Organically, naturally. As clients and people wanting websites built increased the amount of people starting to get involved with creating content with Flash increased. The innovation and communication also increased. More and more blogs starting popping up, Flashcoders was a riot back then. I’ll never forget the first time Jesse Warden replied to one of my posts. I thought I was a “Flash Rock Star”. That’s what we all wanted to be. Long before any recruiter held that term in their mouth. This was a new breed of experience from a new breed of developer. The Flash Developer.

Those were truly amazing, fun, thrilling, ground breaking times. I’ll never forget some of the moments from back then. I don’t think any of us will. The ones that were there. This is when a Java developer would laugh at you if you told him you were a “programmer” or a “developer.” That’s probably another reason we started to stick together and how the community was born. Back then  you couldn’t really ask a C or Java guy a question about some AS1 nested within five Movie Clips on your animation timeline. They had no idea what you were talking about and I don’t think they much cared. Somewhere I remember seeing Keith Peters post something like: you should try it over in the C community for a while, they’re not quite as open as we are. True words indeed.

Timing is an important aspect within all of this as well I think. We were all roughly the same age. Most of us had come from non-traditional backgrounds as far as computer science goes. Skaters, musicians, artists, etc. A pretty far stretch from the programmers of days past. Another reason I think we all stuck together and helped each other out though. We had a lot in common.

Since the early days and the first wave of Flash on the web there’s been several iterations of new developers to start targeting the Flash Player. Each bringing their own imaginations, innovations, experience and passion. Flex of course brought us the RIA and a bunch of Java guys hopped on the boat. I think that was for the best. Some may argue but I think we needed to be tamed a bit. The art of ActionScript development was advancing and there were a lot of people getting us going in the right direction. IDE’s, classes, packages, AS2, components, etc. But in terms of a “real” development environment I think a lot of people were still just hacking away at timeline code. I think around the time Flex 2 was released a lot of the old school Flash developers grew up a little. (Just a little.) Flash Player was maturing, the web was maturing so naturally we had to. I think our passion changed a little and a lot of us started focusing on quality code, learning from our past and started improving our development and programming skills. We started using frameworks, starting using TDD, etc.

Over time I think two roles clearly emerged in the world of creating content for the Flash Player. One was the designer, animator, user experience person. The other was the developer. Back in the beginning this was definitely not the case. If you did Flash stuff, you did everything. Design, code, animation, etc.

This lead to some interesting things though. Now we have a bunch of developers who used to be artists that have been refining their craft and honing their development skills for ten plus years. We can hang with the big boys now in terms of programming and talk shop and compete with the best of ‘em. One things that has remained however is our community. For the most part we’re not a bunch of introverted, self absorbed, navel gazing jerks that aren’t willing to communicate and share. We’re the opposite. We are teh awesome. We share everything. We communicate constantly. We feel bad and ashamed when we work on projects and can’t share our code. We help each other with code problems. Computing problems in general. Hell even life problems. We’re a tight knit bunch. It’s like a TV show or movie almost. There’s a cast in our world. It’s like reality TV, but better. It’s real life. It’s people that care about each other working on similar problems, willing to help each other grow and succeed. I think the community is the core part to Flash. I think you could remove Adobe, I think you could even truly “kill” Flash and remove it. I think even then the community would stand. I think we’d stick together. At least I know a handful of us who I’m about 99.9% sure would.

I think this is something that HTML5 will never have. I’m not going to rant, compare or bash HTML5 or JavaScript here. I’m just saying. I think the “Flash” in “Flash Platform Community” is pretty damn important. We’re a family. Not a family of products. Not a family of product users even. We’re a bunch of developers working toward a common goal and doing it together. That’s a very powerful thing. I think it will continue to drive Flash into the future for some time to come. If you take a minute and think about what Flash was 10 plus years ago and then compare it to what we have now it’s pretty amazing. It’s evolved, morphed, grown and matured. The capabilities have, the language has, the user experience has and the tooling and development experience has. So has the community.

Let’s keep the fire burning. The communication rolling. Let’s keep rattling the web. Changing people’s perception of what is possible. Let’s keep the competitors running as fast as they can to catch up. Let’s keep the bleeding edge bleeding! Let’s look back on this blog post I’ve just written ten years from now and still be developing for the Flash Platform as the Flash Platform Community!!