name:

when did you first get started with computers/programming? how? why?
I wasn’t interested in computers for YEARS, mainly because the only computer I was used to seeing was my dad’s golden rod computer that did nothing but print to it’s super sweet dot-matrix printer < sarcasm/>. So in High School when I got my hands onto a Micrografx “Simply 3D” CD (and a new computer) thanks to my dad things changed. I got right into making all sorts of crazy (and crappy) 3D designs. Then I went into a computer programming class my sophomore year and felt that turbo pascal was swell. After a year we moved to C++ and things got really cool. Then in college everything got boring again with C++ and I went on to 3D again with Maya. It was a few years before Php, Mysql, Html, and Flash would pull me back into the programming world.

when did you start flash/flex/AIR/AS dev?
I’d started doing some simple RIAs with Flash 5 but really got into Flash with Flex 2. At the time I was doing a ton of Javascript with Dojo and Ruby on Rails. Immediately I could see that Flex was pretty cool and ran with it. That was when I started D-Flex and didn’t look back.

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?
Usually yes. Right now, no. Mainly because right now I am creating proof of concepts. My client seriously said “don’t worry about TDD, we just need to get stuff done and quickly”. I’ve written many unit tests for this project, just maybe not upfront.

what application development frameworks have you used? what’s your favorite?
I’ve used many of the “main frameworks”, but my favorite is RobotLegs. Before RL I was using Cairngorm but ended up writing it very similar to RL. When I saw RL I was happy to see something that worked the way I thought. Others frameworks I’ve used: PureMVC, Mate, Parsley

have you done any mobile dev using flash/flex/AIR?
For the last year it seems like I’ve done nothing but Mobile development. It’s fun and not that hard, but there are MANY new concepts to learn. I do have a Max session about it and a book coming out in the spring all about things I’ve learned in Mobile Development with Flex.

what code editor/IDE do you use? any plugins?
I use Eclipse and Flash Builder mainly. When making Ruby apps, I’ll use RadRails and Aptana, but for the most part I stick with Flash Builder.

what other tools do you use for flash/flex/AIR dev?
Other than graphics programs, not many. Most of my application are done completely in code with a few visual helpers like photoshop and illustrator.

what blogs or people on twitter do you follow for flash platform info/news/etc.?
Esh. That is pretty difficult. I don’t follow any particular blogs but I do follow links and tweets from @jessefreedman, @quetwo, @antonioholguin, @feedgrids, @remotesynth, @jesterxl, @flash_platform, @flashcanon, @mlabriola, @rlux, @lizign… I could just keep going for a while.

have you attended or are you attending any conferences this year? as a speaker or attendee only?
I always go to 360Flex and Adobe Max – neither should be missed. I’ll also be at Big Android BBQ this year and will be trying to make it to RiaUnleashed.

do you have any personal projects that you’d like to share?
I’m going to skip this question pushing my answer to the next one. But if you want to see an app I made that works on multiple screens, check out Queue Manager. A netflix queue management app that works on iOS, QNX, and Android systems.

are you involved with any open source projects you’d like to talk about?
I am involved with Spoon Project and so should you! Spoon has been a ton of fun already and a lot of work. We’ve been working hard setting everything up so we can have a great organization. That work isn’t done overnight or anything. Many of my good friends and people I trust are involved and I’m sure that this organization is going to raise the bar.

what are your thoughts on the rebirth of JavaScript (and the HTML spec/family)?
I’m happy with the rebirth of HTML. My only issue is that right now it has the rebirth “afterglow” and many people believe it’s a golden gun. Its a tool – with it’s own flaws.

what version of flex are your working with/targeting? 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5?
Right now I am specifically working with Flex 4.5. Everything I am doing is about mobile these days.

what other programming languages do you know/use?
Php (I’ve forgotten more than I know at this point)
Ruby
Ruby on Rails
Javascript
HTML
Mysql

what do you do when you’re not writing code?
I’m either working out, watching movies, or drinking with friends.

anything else you’d like to mention? blogs, sites, people, tools?
Checkout my blog or my tweets when you want to see what is on my mind.
unitedmindset.com/jonbcampos
@jonbcampos

any questions i should add to this interview?
I think it’s a good interview.

if you were trapped alone on an island forever and you could take one thing with… what would it be?
A towel. Never forget a towel.

what is your favorite animal?
Panthers. Probably explains why I have two black cats always running around here.

name:

when did you start flash/flex/AIR/AS dev?
I started working with Flash and ActionScript back in 1999 when I was still in college and when I started my first web job as a web designer at the University of Delaware. I had played around with a lot of the animation stuff for a while, but when I finally learned ActionScript (1.0 at the time) I became hooked. It was pretty easy to learn, and was totally fun as well.

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?
I am not—mostly because I am doing more prototype-type work or projects that are very small with a limited audience. TDD is something that I would love to teach novice developers to help teach them early in their careers, but it is not easy to teach and there isn’t much content out there for new programmers to work from.

what application development frameworks have you used? what’s your favorite?
Again, since most of my projects are prototype or smaller sized apps, I haven’t used many development frameworks. I have managed projects where we have used Caringorm, DevelopmentArc Core, and RobotLegs, but I personally haven’t worked with them myself. I tend not to get too religious about the frameworks that are used, since I want the team to choose what is best for the project and their personal preference since it will let them be more efficient to get the project finished.

have you done any mobile dev using flash/flex/AIR?
I have! I haven’t released anything into the marketplace yet, but I have been building a ton of prototype applications to test performance and different combinations of tools, workflows, and technologies to do it. In addition, I have been doing a lot of mobile development with HTML frameworks too using jQuery Mobile, Sencha, PhoneGap and others to see what is different between it and the Flash workflow.

what code editor/IDE do you use? any plugins?
I’m pretty vanilla. For my projects I generally use Flash Professional for asset management exporting as SWCs that I then use in Flash Builder without any plug-ins. For prototype projects I generally use the Flash Professional code editor since it is something that is just testing out a concept. For my HTML stuff, I use Dreamweaver for the jQuery hinting, and for anything that is heavy hitting use Notepad++. I have moved over to Windows 7 from Snow Leopard, so I have also been playing with Visual Studio, mostly to do some experimentation with Windows Phone 7 development.

what other tools do you use for flash/flex/AIR dev?
I have been using Maque [http://www.maqueapp.com] from DevelopmentArc recently – It is a very cool app to help with prototype work as it creates a fake data service that you can customize with different schemas and different service types. I know James and Aaron (the developers of Maque) very well, and have been impressed by the project and look forward to see it evolve. Other than that, I don’t use any other developer or coding tools, but for my prototype and mobile app development I would be completely screwed without Fireworks. Say what you will about how amazing Photoshop is, but if you are doing app development there is no comparison to Fireworks: Pixel perfect, scriptable, and fast.

what blogs or people on twitter do you follow for flash platform info/news/etc.?
As a community manager at Adobe there are too many to list; however, I tend to follow all of the Adobe evangelists for the latest projects they are working on, and then general tech blogs like Engadget (which I read multiple times per day) and others. I also listen to Nerd Radio and other podcasts too. I do have to say though that reading blogs has become more difficult in the last couple of years—not because of lack of time or anything, but how commenters have become so bitter recently. I love the Flash/Web/Mobile communities—but there are some outliers that make it a really sad place to be sometimes. I wish people would just embrace that things can be “different” without being “crap”.

have you attended or are you attending any conferences this year? as a speaker or attendee only?
I have attended a bunch this year starting off with FITC Amsterdam, followed by FITC Toronto (my first). I was a speaker at both talking about HTML5 and the new Adobe Edge project that I was the former product manager for. I was going to speak at D2W this year, but had to cancel due to my job shift at Adobe, but I will be a lab instructor at Adobe MAX this year covering two labs on Flash Professional and ActionScript 3.0 development for phones and tablets. I hope to go to others, mostly Flash on the Beach, but will be going to a bunch of user groups on the west coast, including SDFUG in September.

do you have any personal projects that you’d like to share?
I recently finished a book that was recently released called “Fundamentals of ActionScript 3.0: Design and Develop” for PeachPit press. I have been a big advocate of trying to make it easier for people to learn ActionScript and become developers with the Flash Platform. First it started as an instructor at San Francisco State University (which I still do), and then my ActionScript 1:1 series on Adobe TV. Last year, I held a pre-conference lab at MAX that included a course guide. That guide evolved into the new book, and I added a new section specifically for AIR development for desktop and mobile, and some of the new features of Flash Professional CS5.5.

are you involved with any open source projects you’d like to talk about?
Nope—just a consumer of them J

what are your thoughts on the rebirth of JavaScript (and the HTML spec/family)?
As the former product manager of Adobe Edge, I’m an interesting person to answer this question. Over the last year, I have really been moving my focus to tablet and mobile UX design and development. With Flash, you get Android, iOS and RIM—but for the others you have to go native or work with HTML-based frameworks like PhoneGap that support Symbian, WebOS and they just started to support Windows Phone 7 too. You will undoubtedly need to make more than one version of your app—but hopefully not 5 or even 6…With AIR you can get three out of the way, and then with PhoneGap you can get the others, plus you’ll have the HTML to make a sweet mobile browser version as well.

It is tough to match the creative power that you get with Flash, and while it is possible to get a lot with CSS3, it is awkward and not as straightforward as Flash. As a designer and developer, and taking my virtual “Adobe” hat off, I honestly think that mobile designers and developers will need to embrace both. The part that sucks is that the HTML5 tools, frameworks, and technology change so quickly that it is difficult to be on top of it and still get your work done. It is getting a lot better, but it is still tough to find stable footing.

what version of flex are your working with/targeting? 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5?
I always work with the latest version since I am trying to find workflow issues and provide training materials for the latest version that is in the market, so I have been working with 4.5.

what other programming languages do you know/use?
Other than my 1986-era BASIC skills? Not that much. I know a little (emphasis on little) C# and Objective-C, but that’s about it. I generally work in ActionScript, JavaScript, MXML, HTML and CSS.

what do you do when you’re not writing code?
I play a lot of games, ranging from real-time strategy, turn-based strategy, puzzle, role-playing, MMORPGs, and also physical card and board games. I also have a huge collection of old games I have built up since the early 1980s, starting with old text adventures like Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy, Alone in the Dark, Starflight, Sentinel Worlds, Loom, and the complete Ultima and King’s Quest series that I get a ton of inspiration from in terms of how to build an immersive world within strict technical constraints. I haven’t been adding to the collection recently since I’m pretty happy with it, but every now and then I’ll pull one off the shelf and install it in DOXBox and play it for a bit. It is nostalgic fun, and reminds me that sometimes the best games are based on story and core design and not on the latest visual technology.

In addition, I have been transforming my interest in fitness and nutrition into a hobby as well. I have been trying to lose weight for several years, and have been having some success, but starting in 2011, I wanted to get much more dedicated to it so I started a fitness blog called BarbellGeek. [http://barbellgeek.wordpress.com] I have been working with a trainer to build an exercise program that I have been tracking in multiple forms in journals and Excel spreadsheets along with my nutrition program where I measure all of my food and calculate total caloric intake and my BMR (basal metabolic rate). As a result I have lost 20 pounds since the beginning of the year, and am continuing to make progress. Recently I have been learning more about supplements including amino acids, proteins, vitamins and minerals to help me along my goal. Along the way, I have learned a lot and have prototyped some mobile and tablet apps from my experience that I hope to release sometime soon.

anything else you’d like to mention? blogs, sites, people, tools?
I recently changed my role at Adobe, and decided to leave product management and get more involved with the community as a community manager. To help, I started a new blog, SFDesigner:DW [http://sfdesignerdw.wordpress.com], where I’ll be writing about ActionScript, mobile and tablet app workflow, user experience design, Flex, Flash, and HTML5. I just started it recently, but am looking forward to using it as a way to share all of the stuff I learn through my prototypes and app creation experiences.

any questions i should add to this interview?
It would be cool to see what everyone’s first experience with a computer was. For me it was with a TRS-80 that my step-dad brought home from work. He was the head of the computer department (then it was called the “data processing” department) at a local community college in New Jersey. A little later, we had an IBM clone from Sperry, an old PC company which is where I learned how to program. My step-dad bought be a book on BASIC programming for the IBM-PC using the built in BASIC compiler that came with DOS. I created TONS of little games with it. I even created a complete Star Trek bridge simulator application that had sound effects, graphics and a randomly generated star map. Very nerdy, but it was tons of fun, and allowed my creative and fantasy life to enter into the real world through the computer. I even created a box and manual for the game—I should have known then that I was born to make games and software.

what’s your favorite animal?
Hands down, the squirrel. My husband and I call them “bevos.” It was a name he called them years ago as a kid and it just stuck. We have peanut feeders at our vacation cabin in Sonoma and love watching them scurry around, eat nuts and just be cute. They are such neat animals.

name:

when did you start flash/flex/AIR/AS dev?

I began using Flash here and there in 1999/2000 with Macromedia Flash 4. Previous to that, I was mainly doing straight HTML and a bunch of design work; Photoshop, Illustrator, 35mm photography, and photo compositing. What drew me to Flash was that I could take pieces from all of those areas and use them together in a meaningful way. I think everyone coming to Flash from that angle remembers the first simple animation they created and how outstanding the feeling of publishing your first swf was. It was magical for me.

I actually didn’t get involved in Flex until Flex 2 and ActionScript 3.0. I was doing a lot of work with AS2 before this using Flash Professional, and AS3 was made available in Flex Builder before Flash because it was built into the SDK. I tried out Flex but it didn’t click for me- so I used the Flex SDK to write AS3 using FlashDevelop for a time. This is how I learned AS3. By the time AS3 was available in Flash Pro… I was already set

What eventually “forced” me into Flash Builder and Flex was the ability to write AIR applications and the tooling built into Flex Builder 3. I was using the Apollo alphas and had a few projects at the university where I was pushing the technology. The first AIR project we deployed was actually an Apollo project a day before – so we were really on the bleeding edge! Anyhow- using Flex for AIR apps got me to appreciate the framework for use in other projects… saw the obvious benefits of using Flex Builder over Flash Pro for writing code… Flex framework makes a lot of layout and structural underpinnings so simple – so I stuck with it. I do go to Flash Pro for certain things now and again, but Flash Builder and Flex are primary for me now.

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?

No… I’m not. I understand the benefits and have made numerous attempts to integrate the practice into my workflow, but as it stands now I’m just a total failure with TDD! With most things though, I find that my initial set of attempts are often crash-and-burn exercises. At some point, it will all come into place and I just have to work toward that moment. The problem right now is that much of what I do is systems maintenance and planning – so am not as actively involved in any solid development starters at the moment.

what application development frameworks have you used? what’s your favorite?

The Adobe Flex Framework

Well… I’ve definitely looked at other frameworks and micro-architectures. A lot of people seem to like RobotLegs and I’ve done some beginner exercises with that to get concepts down – but have not attempted anything in a real project yet.

have you done any mobile dev using flash/flex/AIR?

Yes. Mostly experiments for projects like my “Flash Development for Android Cookbook”, but have also written some applications for Android that are available in the Market. These include; Sketch-N-Save, AXNA Feed Reader, My Shit-List!, Transient Recorder, and others. I’m in the middle of writing a mobile Flex application for the university right now which should (eventually) be available across multiple platforms. It taps into the university media management system to provide users with direct access to video, image, and audio materials along with associated metadata records for their mobile devices. It’s in beta for Android, and once we get that solid will look at publishing for iOS and perhaps event BlackBerry Tablet OS. We’ll see what use may dictate.

what code editor/IDE do you use? any plugins?

Primarily Flash Builder – no plugins. I also launch Flash Professional from time to time to work on legacy projects and perform specific functionality that is better suited to that environment. I have used FDT and FlashDevelop on occasion… and as mentioned before, actually learned AS3 on FlashDevelop.
what other tools do you use for flash/flex/AIR dev?

I use the entire Adobe Creative Suite for my work. Well, almost the entire suite. Also tools like Lightroom for my photography. Lightroom is awesome.

With Flex projects, I’ll often use a graphics package like Photoshop or whatnot to create any image assets needed, sometimes will design skinning elements in that or Illustrator/Fireworks depending upon my mood. I do my FXG work within Flash Catalyst and copy/paste into Flash Builder. XML, HTML, and such usually gets edited in Dreamweaver. Audition for audio assets, video stuff is covered by Premier Pro/After Effects… really try and use the full suite if the project allows it.

what blogs or people on twitter do you follow for flash platform info/news/etc.?

I generally don’t follow specific blogs but rely on Twitter for most of my information and news. Too many people to mention, but you can have a look at who I follow and interact with for a good idea! As a general rule, if you are an AEL, ACP, or Adobian who follows me… I will follow you back! Also – if you are doing other interesting non-Adobe-specific stuff (Unity, experimental HTML/CSS/JS, other crazy stuff), that is cool and will probably peak my interest!

I just beg everyone on Twitter to please make it apparent who you are and where your interests lie – makes it much easier to follow back that way. I try my best not to be a Twitter-snob so the best way to get my attention is to ENGAGE

have you attended or are you attending any conferences this year? as a speaker or attendee only?

Yes… *deep breath*.

A lot of conference activity this year… too much! I started off the year doing three different Adobe User Group presentations on BlackBerry PlayBook development (Columbus Digital, LA Flash, and KCDevCore).

In March I took a break from technical presentations and did a spark session for Ignite Denver 8 on personal branding. In case you are unfamiliar with Ignite – many cities around the world host these events. Speakers have 5 minutes and 20 slides to talk about any subject they choose… and the slides auto-advance on a timer It’s a really interesting way to present and Ignite Denver pulls around 400 people, so you get a pretty big crowd.

I attended 360|Flex in Denver this year and wasn’t going to do any presentations myself, but the local Adobe User Group, RMAUG, had a slot open and I threw together an hour long session on “Getting Down n’ Dirty with Mobile Flex 4.5 Projects” which went really well for being a last minute gig. Since Adobe released Flash Builder 4.5 that morning, the topic was timely and I’d been working on the prerelease versions of the tooling for months (not to mention materials for my book which was still in tech-review at this point). It was a good session. Jun Heider was moderating a panel in the evening one night called “Open Screen Project: Views from the Trenches” and I also contributed to that. They tried to record the panel but I’m not quite sure if the recording was ever released.

In June, I did another Ignite session for Ignite Denver 9 called “Zombies, Vampires, and Babies: What You NEED to Know!”. It basically revolved around comparisons of babies with the undead and was really well received. I enjoy doing the Ignite stuff but will probably have to skip out on Ignite Denver 10 in September because of other obligations. Next year!

In July, I was very fortunate to have been accepted to speak at Dee Sadler’s excellent D2W (Designer/Developer/Workflow) conference in Kansas City. My session “Adapting Expectations to Fit a Mobile Workflow” revolved around mobile once again but with an emphasis on workflow and the considerations that go along with that. The amount of killer speakers at this conference is astounding – all great sessions.

A few weeks later, I attended the Adobe Education Leader Institute at Adobe HQ in San Jose for the 3rd year. This is a week-long conference for AELs and is always a blast. We get to interface with product managers, engineers, and executives… all sorts of interesting people- including other AELs from around the world. During the event; I moderated a panel on Adobe Edge, did a 5-minute presentation on custom context menus in AS3, and presented a hands-on session which covered the basics of developing a mobile AIR application using Flash Builder and mobile Flex. One of the cool things this year is that Adobe opened up many of the sessions to the outside world over Connect – so we were able to have an expanded audience.

The last set of sessions for the Summer were done for the COLTT conference in Boulder, Colorado. I presented a full session called “Mobile computing in a ‘Post-PC’ era… right?” in which the current state of mobile computing in education was discussed, and that evening spoke at the Café Pédagogique event on the necessity (or not) of institutional mobile applications.

Upcoming speaking engagements will all be during the Adobe MAX event in Los Angeles. I’ll be presenting a scheduled MAX session called “From Desktop to Mobile: Application Functionality for Small Screens” on Tuesday at 4:00pm and will be doing a condensed, modified version of this same talk for the Adobe Education pre-conference day. I’m also scheduled to speak on mobile UX during the FITC unconference and have scheduled a session on BlazeDS, Flex, and Java/Spring for the 360|MAX unconference. A full schedule for sure!

do you have any personal projects that you’d like to share?

Sure! I’ll be writing about this further down the question stack though.

are you involved with any open source projects you’d like to talk about?

Not really. I do plan on open sourcing the codebase for my DropFolders application this Summer. This is an application that I built to both showcase the native process functionality in AIR 2.0, and as an application for use by less technically inclined members of the university community who wanted to encode video with no real fuss.
The app is basically a GUI for the HandBrake CLI and includes the ability to set up sets of monitored directories and outputs with custom encoding parameters. Almost no one at the university is using it, but it has gained a pretty large user base in the wider world. Unfortunately, my time is limited and as such cannot continue to support the application… hence my desire to open up the source code for others to build off of.

what are your thoughts on the rebirth of JavaScript (and the HTML spec/family)?

It’s good to see HTML finally evolving to more closely match the needs of modern browser-based projects. JavaScript, unfortunately hasn’t really changed much apart for some new APIs that come along with the HTML5 spec and an increased number of frameworks (like jQuery) to make JS development a little less painful. I was really hoping that JavaScript would adopt the ECMAScript 4 proposal put forth about 5 years ago (the same spec that AS3 was originally based off of) but sadly it never did. So we are stuck with the same old JS that I used when I started doing web development over a decade ago! Unbelievable.

I have to say something about HTML/CSS/JS and Flash here. This is the same thing I’ve been saying for years but it is worth repeating. HTML and Flash have worked hand-in-hand for their entire history and there is no reason that this will change with an evolved HTML spec. No reason at all. The fact that some basic animation can now be done using HTML/CSS/JS in no way renders Flash obsolete as the platform has such reach now that simple animation on the web is not really a concern for really any of the Flash devs I talk to on a regular basis. If you need some simple animation on a website- by all means use HTML/CSS/JS to accomplish that if it is appropriate to do so.

Two things that have really irked me about this whole debate has been the public condemnation of Flash by Apple (this sort of corporate assault is unheard of) and the renewed antagonism toward Flash developers by people using other technologies (though mostly from the JS side of things). Apple has taken an anti-Flash stance and has made it official company policy. There is nothing we can do about that but hope they eventually reverse the policy. Individual developers, however, are a different story entirely. Isn’t the web about freedom? We have a variety of choices when deciding which technologies to employ atop the basic HTML/CSS/JS web stack. The HTML5 spec has the embed tag for a reason – to expand upon this basic set of technologies with other platforms. There is nothing wrong with that. Unity, Flash, Java, Silverlight, Shockwave… whatever is an appropriate use of technology should be accepted. Yes, if you choose to use something outside the “standard” set of browser-based tech, you may not be able to access that content on all devices in the world. This is nothing new. People need to realize this, gain some perspective, and get over their narrow-minded view of the web. It’s big enough for everyone to play

In short; be nice to one another and accepting of other technologies and platforms. And if you disagree with a particular technology… please refrain from being a total smarmy douche about it.

what version of flex are your working with/targeting? 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5?

Aside from legacy projects, I always target the latest version of Flex. We generally don’t have any restrictions at the university level when it comes to this so it is rarely a problem… though we do evaluate such things on a project-to-project basis.

what other programming languages do you know/use?

Flash/Flex/AS3 is my core but I have rarely met a Flash dev who only works within the confines of the platform. This is probably due to the history of Flash Player in the web browser- which necessitates that a developer knows at least some HTML, JavaScript, and ideally a few backend server technologies. As for myself, this includes ColdFusion, PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Zinc, JavaScript, FMS, a little JSP, a bit of ASP, BlazeDS, and a smattering of other languages as the need arises.

Flash is a gateway drug. Once you have a grasp on a few of these things and a willingness to read the docs, nothing is really all that hard to pick up. I really want to pick up C# but haven’t come across a project that necessitates it yet. I may have to just come up with a personal project sometime over the next year or so to experiment. Finding the time to do this while staying abreast of changes and additions to my core toolset is tough- but can be done.

With all of that said though… I absolutely prefer to work in Flash. It’s solid, proven technology that can do just about anything you need. It is an absolute joy to work with where other tech can be a painful experience!

what do you do when you’re not writing code?

I’ve been writing a lot of articles and books lately. My “Flash Development for Android Cookbook” has been out for around six weeks now and is beginning to get some really good reviews. I’m also in the middle of writing some short eBooks for O’Reilly which should be out in October and am in the planning stages of another print book with my primary publisher, Packt, for publication in 2012. There’s also a short, 48-page book that I wrote to accompany the set of mobile Flash development DVDs that I recorded with Peter Elst and video2brain a few months back for Adobe Press and Peachpit. This collection should be available something this month. A smaller workshop of new Flash Builder and Flex stuff with video2brain was actually just published and is available now.

I’m almost always involved in teaching a variety of courses for the University of Denver as adjunct faculty. These courses range from beginning Flash and AS3 to web graphic design with Fireworks and PHP development. A real variety in materials… I actually did a special topics workshop this Summer on mobile Flash and Flex which just concluded. That was interesting! The students built a lot of interesting apps and I received really good feedback about the course.

Apart from my work at the university, I also run a small technical consultancy and production company from my home called Fractured Vision Media, LLC. We do a variety of projects for clients both local to Denver and as far away as Seattle – mostly Flash and AIR work but it varies. With the amount of writing I’ve gotten myself into lately, I’ve been trying to cut down on the amount of active clients we take on. It’s a rough balance.

FVM is also a small record label which I leverage when publishing audio recordings as my experimental darkambient alter-ego – “An Early Morning Letter, Displaced”. I’ve been working in music production through this project for over a decade and have released five different albums of music (2 lp, 3 ep) during that time. FVM has also released a free collection of music collected from the developer community called “Emergent Collective One” which contains a stellar set of varied material. I keep meaning to organize a second volume but time has not been kind to me this year.

I have a wife and two small daughters as well… so always need to find time for them. It’s difficult with all of these other things going on and I may have to cut back on some of this work in 2012 in order to retain some level of sanity.

anything else you’d like to mention? blogs, sites, people, tools?

I’ll list some resources and sites that I’ve mentioned above here, but want to note a few things first; primarily, thanks for giving me the opportunity to do this interview! I love this series of developer interviews- so informative to read others perspectives on these things. Second, I’m writing this on a long airplane session… stuck in a seat for hours… with no one to hear my screams… so to be able to just work through these questions has been quite welcome! This probably accounts for the length of my answers as well – if anyone is able to get through reading the entire interview- good on you!

Links:
- JosephLabrecque.com
http://josephlabrecque.com
- Twitter Profile
http://twitter.com/JosephLabrecque
- In Flagrante Delicto!
http://inflagrantedelicto.memoryspiral.com
- Flash Development for Android Cookbook
https://www.packtpub.com/flash-development-for-android-cookbook/book
- Mobile Development with Flash Professional CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5: Learn by Video
http://www.adobepress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321788109
- Adobe Flash Builder and Flex 4.5: New Features Workshop
http://www.video2brain.com/en/products-161.htm
- Fractured Vision Media, LLC
http://fracturedvisionmedia.com/
- Emergent Collective One
http://fracturedvisionmedia.com/FVM005/

what’s your favorite animal?
Dragon. I am a dragon.

name:

when did you start flash/flex/AIR/AS dev?

Whoooeee. I believe that was in 2005. I was working at a pretty boring, soul-sucking place in NYC and I could do my job well in a couple of hours, so what did I do with the other six hours of the day? I messed around with flash. I thought I was gonna be an animator, but had no patience for it whatsoever. I was hooked from the first myMC.onRelease.

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?

I am not at the moment. Really looking forward to trying it out on my next flash/flex project, as most of you know I’ve had my head stuck in the django/python clouds lately.

what application development frameworks have you used? what’s your favorite?

PureMVC, Cairngorm, and lately I’ve been learning Robotlegs. A few months ago I made a small flex/air project using a mashup of PureMVC and SignalsCircuit, which is Omar Gonzalez’ revision of the PureMVC notification system. I enjoyed that immensely. To find out more about it, check out https://github.com/s9tpepper/SignalsCircuit-for-PureMVC.

have you done any mobile dev using flash/flex/AIR?

Ha! I was messing around with Flash Lite in 2006, trying to build a finance app on a fancy Nokia model to tell me how much I had left to spend for a particular budget. I believe that’s called Mint these days; sigh. Actually, my most recent dalliances with mobile dev took place before AIR 2 came out, when the general consensus was that it was too slow to be usable. It felt like moving heaven and earth (mostly because of Apple), but I finally was able to get haXe working on my iPhone, using Hugh Sanderson’s NME library. It ran amazingly well and to be honest I’m rather surprised I don’t hear more people talking about it, specifically for game development. Coding in haXe is almost as joyful as AS3.

I have an idea for an app that I’ll be working on soon, and it will be for tablets. While I may deign to try Objective-C (never say never) I am going to give this a shot first: http://www.blog.visup.it/2010/10/tech/haxe-titanium-targeting-iphoneipad-and-android

What I really want is to be able to code in a language that feels natural to me, and yet be able to use native iOS and Android UI. I think I’d rather sacrifice the native UI for my idea (it’s somewhere between a toy and a game) and use AIR mobile than cave to old man Jobs and use Obj-C, only to have to rewrite the whole thing in Java. I don’t think I’ll try to use Flex. Though I love it on the web, a little blue bird told me it’s not a good idea on devices.

what code editor/IDE do you use? any plugins?

I use Flash Builder. Though it’s been breaking a lot lately. May have to switch it up.

Textmate for html/css/js/php dev. I’ve never been patient enough to get code completion working with Textmate, otherwise i’d look into hooking it up with Sprouts and using it for flash dev. If anyone wants to tutor me someday, let me know on Twitter.

Eclipse + pydev for django and python development. I’ve also been known to use vi, ‘cuz I’m hardcore like that.

what other tools do you use for flash/flex/AIR dev?

git rocks my world.

what blogs or people on twitter do you follow for flash platform info/news/etc.?

Oh, I was going to save this for a blog post but you know what, I’m really too busy these days. People, if you don’t use Google Reader, sign up for an account. Make a bogus Twitter account. Then find a bookmarklet that will let you subscribe to blogs with one-click. Make a public folder on Reader, and get the RSS feed URL for it. Feed that to TwitterFeed, and point that feed to the bogus twitter account. Now follow that account.

All your fave blogs are belong to Twitter, yea!

Or since the above is a bit convoluted, you can just check out who I interact with on Twitter. Lots of awesome people.

have you attended or are you attending any conferences this year? as a speaker or attendee only?

Yikes, I love conferences but the last one I went to was in 2008 (FITC Toronto). I know, for shame. I’m pretty cheap.

No, but seriously, I’m in startup mode at the moment and a conference doesn’t quite fit in my gruel-and-an-occasional-beer budget. Speaking would certainly offset the cost. I was thinking about proposing something one day called System Administration for Dummies. Holler if you feel that would be an interesting thing to hear about.

do you have any personal projects that you’d like to share?

Well since you ASKED, we are in the midst of launching our first startup. It’ll probably be a couple of weeks until a private beta, but sign up below if you’d like to do a little QA for me! I promise it will take the form of a short survey and you can write as much or as little as you want

http://ruedaminute.wufoo.com/forms/retrogiftsco-beta-signup/

are you involved with any open source projects you’d like to talk about?

Nope. Wish I were but it’s hard to find the time these days.

what are your thoughts on the rebirth of JavaScript (and the HTML spec/family)?

I’ve been working with jQuery a bit lately. I can’t say I’m enamored with it, but I’d like to try backbone.js on a new project. For me it’s pretty simple, I think Flash will become a tool for web game development and multi-platform mobile development. For traditional web apps, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a client who wants to create a new one in Flash– unless a requirement is that it be very graphics-rich. Flex devs will have plenty of maintenance work, though, for the forseeable future.

People have been making a lot of pretty things with Canvas lately, but honestly I don’t really get it. Flash is a much more mature tool in my opinion for beauty. Why make it so hard for yourself? Cuz of a frickin’ iPad? The only people using those things (other than us devs) are so old, they can’t even see what you just made, dude.

LOL. I’m kidding (kind of)

what version of flex are your working with/targeting? 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5?

4.5. there has been a bit of hate on Twitter about skins lately but I couldn’t disagree more. I LOVE skinning in flex 4! it’s like, what I do to relax or something.

what other programming languages do you know/use?

I think i’ve said them all already, but python, html/css/js, actionscript, haXe, php/mysql, and I do a lot of unix stuff when i’m messing around inside servers.

what do you do when you’re not writing code?

I’ve been playing American-League only fantasy baseball. I’m second in my league. I love being in water. I love hiking and being outside, and I crave the sun. A few months ago we finished trekking from the southern tip of South America to Colombia, where my family is from. It was unreal. Ooh, that reminds me of another idea I have. Couchsurfing for developers. Think of it as international, intimate hackathon organizing. Let me know if you want to help build it, we could use django!

anything else you’d like to mention? blogs, sites, people, tools?

Just want to say thanks to my man Sean for asking me to do this, had a blast, didn’t know I had so much to say

Oh and I just moved to Texas! Anyone who wants to connect in Austin or the surrounds, get in touch!

http://twitter.com/ruedaminute
http://blog.ruedaminute.com

what’s your favorite animal?

Probably this guy:

He’s called the water bear, and he exists.

name:

when did you start flash/flex/AIR/AS dev?

Funny… I used to be of the mindset that Flash was evil, and slowed everything down when browsing the web…

At the time, I was working for a large company and finished this huge project about 9 months early. Since I had a TON of free time, I decided that I was going to mess with Flash MX 2004 – y’know, the good ol’ AS2 days.

I started with an MP3 player for my blog that I never updated (hmmm… still seems to be the case!), but wanted to showcase some beats I had made. I set out writing all kinds of manual tweens (accellerators and decelerators, etc) and instantly fell in love. I wasn’t too happy with working in frames in a procedural sense, seemed to have quite the learning curve coming from an OOP background. But once I got it, I was hooked! I started writing galleries, forum front-ends, showcase sandboxes, and yes I even built an entire website in Flash. I was that guy. But, I proved to myself, and others around me that Flash wasn’t bad, the developers were. And it was clear why, the Flash IDE was not tailored for development, and its user base wasn’t exactly prone to development either.

But the problem is, I didn’t have any REAL work to do in Flash, I was playing around during my free time at work. I decided to leave the company after hearing I had a month until our entire department was going to be outsourced (which was my fault for finishing the project so damn quick :S, to which I still feel bad for all involved) and found a new gig. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Flash, it was my mainstay (at the time) which was PHP. I did a few jobs after that doing PHP/HTML for everything from eCommerce, to random agency clients, to large enterprises. At my last enterprise job, I met Jonathan Campos who I became friends with, and we talked shop quite often. It’s funny, on almost a daily basis he would tell me “Man, you really should check out Flex, I think you’d like it. It has a lot of OOP concepts you’d like, while giving you some cool power to do some flashy things.” I had jobs, job offers, etc in PHP so I didn’t jump immediately, but after he left the company he was hitting me up about job offers in the metroplex, and lit a fire under my ass.

That weekend I went home, and wrote tween and particle engines in AS3, and did the controller UI in Flex. The next Monday I was interviewing for a job, and found I was well enough qualified compared to the others they had been interviewing for the last 6 months. w00t! I got a job! But, honestly, I still knew virtually nothing about Flex.

Since then, it’s all I care about… Flash, Flex, AIR. It’s a disease… A drug… Everyone should be on it.

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?

No. I’ve practiced it quite often doing PHP in an enterprise environment, but as I’ve come to Flash/Flex it seems no one has time to do anything, let alone think about testing. I really wish we did TDD where I’m at now, but I consider it a utopian practice. Maybe one day I’ll get a gig that allows me to actually utilize the SDLC to it’s definition, and not have upper management spew bs about agile when we’re actually waterfall

what application development frameworks have you used? what’s your favorite?

I suppose we mean just Flash/Flex; in which case: cringed with Cairngorm, dabbled with Mate, heavily used PureMVC, and my mobile efforts have been RobotLegs.

I like PureMVC for enterprise development; it’s standard MVC structure is nice, and with everything being explicit it’s easy to pick up a project.

RobotLegs has been great for mobile; really lets you showcase stuff faster than any other MVC framework I’ve messed with. But for larger projects, I have had issues I won’t go into.

have you done any mobile dev using flash/flex/AIR?

Yep, when Flex 4.5 was first under way, I played a lot with it to make an AIR for Android app. I quit that project in place of trying to build a Playbook application for the well-known developer offer. In the end, I made an Auto Insurance application to store information about your insurance, as well as log information about an accident you might get into. I also made another app for fun which displays Fireworks on different backdrops. Both were fun to make, and helped me understand the mobile design mindset.

what code editor/IDE do you use? any plugins?

Flash Builder 4.5, no plugins.

what other tools do you use for flash/flex/AIR dev?

Flash Pro for sure, and I heavily rely on ANT for production releases.

what blogs or people on twitter do you follow for flash platform info/news/etc.?

I don’t do much for scanning blogs; I’ve given up on my Google Reader as well because it’s overwhelmingly full all the time.
At this point, I look to twitter for the good links. I’ll see them pop up, a few guys retweet, and I’m doing the same.

have you attended or are you attending any conferences this year? as a speaker or attendee only?

Unfortunately not. I wasn’t given the approval to go on the company’s dime, and I ate up all my PTO visiting elderly family members.
My goal is to be a speaker at either 360 Flex, or maybe even MAX. We shall see!

do you have any personal projects that you’d like to share?

Not at the moment. I’m trying to come up with a niche product that has a wide spread use… Wait… So is everyone else!

are you involved with any open source projects you’d like to talk about?

Not any more. Having only been in Flash/Flex for 2.5 years, I’ve mostly been involved with understanding the internals of Flash, Flex compiler, and best practices. Eventually I’d like to contribute, as I know a lot of libs have helped me along the way.

what are your thoughts on the rebirth of JavaScript (and the HTML spec/family)?

Meh. I was going to leave it at that, but I suppose that’s boring.

In all honesty, I’m not even the least bit interested. I have been doing HTML since ’96, when the best thing you had for layout was a spacer image tag and a table tag. I used to make “cheat code” pages for my favorite games (hey I was 13/14, gimme a break). It was easy back then… For a while now, all these browsers have made doing HTML unbearable for me. I’m not in the business of making up use cases depending on having moons align, or browsers rendering correctly. It’s just not fun, and I’m beyond happy to not have to worry about it much anymore.

what version of flex are your working with/targeting? 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5?

4.0 for my employer, 4.5 for personal projects.

what other programming languages do you know/use?

PHP, HTML/JS, C++, C#/VB, and when I was way younger I did perl. I’ve played with: java, python, ruby, and brainfuck

what do you do when you’re not writing code?

I try to stay off the computer if I can. After 15 years, it gets old sitting in front of a monitor day in and day out. As of late, it’s mostly projects around the house; but I’ve built a large shed in my yard, and have designed and modeled in Sketchup some custom desks I plan on making.

anything else you’d like to mention? blogs, sites, people, tools?

He already knows, but I’d like to thank Jonathan for introducing me to Flex, and people involved in our community along the way. Big thanks!

In regular passing, I’d say 360 Flex has been the best conference I’ve been to; not for the material, but the intimacy of the setting. It’s not too big, not too small. You get some great social interaction with some of the top devs in the Flash/Flex world, and it’s amazing to see the different lives we all live.

any questions i should add to this interview?

Sorry, but I can’t think of any at the moment.

name:

when did you start flash/flex/AIR/AS dev?

I have been a developer since 2001 and started working in the Flash Player since 2004

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?

I stated using more TDD this year. It is proven to be a great way to prove functionality and help better seperate logic from views in Flash.

what application development frameworks have you used? what’s your favorite?

I started with Cairngorm back in the day, switched to PureMVC for a while but started using Parsley on every project this year. I found it’s better at separation on concerns and that also helps with TDD.

have you done any mobile dev using flash/flex/AIR?

A little but looks like I will be doing more. Clients ask about it all the time and app development on platforms such as phones and tablets seems to be the way things are going for us guys that build RIA’s and such.

what code editor/IDE do you use? any plugins?

I use FDT the most. I find that it has the most features that allow me to customize my workflow and speed up development.

what other tools do you use for flash/flex/AIR dev?

Flash IDE, Photoshop for asset creation, De MonsterDebugger, also been playing around with sprouts (ruby gem for working on flash development)

what blogs or people on twitter do you follow for flash platform info/news/etc.?

http://www.theflashblog.com

http://twitter.com/matthewswallace/companies

http://twitter.com/matthewswallace/flash-peeps

what are your thoughts on the rebirth of JavaScript (and the HTML spec/family)?

There is a lot of really awesome stuff out there and I am sure we will see even more awesomeness. As flash developers we are in a great position to learn and push HTML and JavaScript to new and exciting levels.

what version of flex are your working with/targeting? 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5?

I have developed in Flex since version 3 and do my best to work in the latest version. The last few projects and current work are all in Flex 4 and above.

what other programming languages do you know/use?

Java, Ruby, Javascript are others that I use on a regular bases. I find that I can develop in just any language. A developer is a developer right?!

what do you do when you’re not writing code?

Solve the problem in the most reusable way possible.

anything else you’d like to mention? blogs, sites, people, tools?

Places you can find me.

http://mattwallace.me

http://twitter.com/matthewswallace

http://gplus.to/mattwallace

name:

when did you start flash/flex/AIR/AS dev?

Started Flash and ActionScript in 2001. Doing our projects in Director didn’t work for a variety of reasons, namely Designers couldn’t use Director with me, their designs were limited, and animations looked better in Flash using it’s sub-pixel rendering. Also attachMovie had a HUGE development speed up compared to swapping with pre-existing items in Director’s score; that was the nail in the coffin for transitioning.

Started Flex in 2004 at 1.0; at first I didn’t like it, but as my client base changed, I fell in love with the width and heights of “100%”.

I did like 1 personal AIR project that had some pretty decent uptake, but that’s about it. Most of it has been personal projects. Most AIR I do now is mobile only.

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?

No. I’m usually a consultant. As such, I’m not often hired to build things, I’m hired to fix huge pre-existing projects, or ensure new projects get built amongst the most difficult, setup-to-fail situations possible. I’m usually put on teams who live in daily fire drills where builds fail, no one knows why, management is beyond frustrated, but it’s pitched as “a cool Flex app we’d love to have you help build”. My first order of business is clearly identify why the client is in the situation they are, and make professional recommendations, and then help implement those recommendations. Often you’re working with teams that don’t practice TDD, or who don’t know how to unit test. Other times, you have larger problems then simply writing code.

For those clients who have smaller projects on shorter deadlines such as design agencies, no. The technical debt is never paid, and the shelf life is measured in hours or days.

For startups or smaller companies building products, I only do unit tests for problem/in flux areas. These include 3rd party libraries built by another firm that consistently fails to test themselves, or complicated application that forms a core value of the app, but keeps changing because the client/stakeholders are still feeling out the functionality.

The common thing that happens for Enterprise clients is I’ll usually increase test coverage on problem areas to help reduce/remove the fire drills, specifically around service layers (code that talks to a back-end). These are unit tests written around existing code, not new code where you write the test first. Again, most of these are more for ensuring integration testing goes smoothly, not really testing the code in isolate to prevent technical debt.

I’d love to do more TDD, but most of my clients have bigger problems.

what application development frameworks have you used? what’s your favorite?

Cairngorm, PureMVC, ARP, and if you do Flex consulting with large clients, you have to know about Robotlegs/Swiz/Parsely.

Robotlegs is my favorite, although I’m still learning about v2.

have you done any mobile dev using flash/flex/AIR?

Yeah, although, no paying clients yet. Most want native. It’s really fun! Single code base for 60% of your core code, and you just make your GUI flexible. That, and the apps are smaller in scope with shorter project times; nice change of pace.

what code editor/IDE do you use? any plugins?

Tie between Flash Builder 4.5 and IntelliJ 10.5. Flash Builder owns project setup and MXML/Flex. IntelliJ owns ActionScript dev. No plugins, although, I’m told I’m a moron for not using SourceMate… in fact, I think I’m the only guy on the planet who doesn’t use it every day.

what other tools do you use for flash/flex/AIR dev?

BeyondCompare, Github, Tower… normal stuff. I’ll use TextMate for quick previews edits.

what blogs or people on twitter do you follow for flash platform info/news/etc.?

I don’t follow blogs; I just wait for someone to bubble up a good blog post from Twitter or Google+. Or, I’ll stumble upon one whilst doing a Google search on trying to solve some problem.

have you attended or are you attending any conferences this year? as a speaker or attendee only?

You don’t attend conferences, you speak at conferences. That said, I’ve tried not to this year so I can save money to fix my house up and move. That said, if you’re in the Flash/Flex world, it’s kind of weird to say “No” to Shawn Pucknell, so… spoke at FITC Toronto this year about mobile design, and speaking about refactoring + doing a workshop on Flash & Lua/Corona mobile gaming at RIA Unleashed this fall in Boston.

do you have any personal projects that you’d like to share?

…eventually; consulting + running my business + my family takes all my time. 2 I’m working on now are:

- 1942 PlaneShooter mobile game built with Corona I want to release as a series of tutorials + source code
- a mobile Flash AIR app that works with Cocoonp2p to do some neat peer to peer stuff with devices controlling other computers & devices

are you involved with any open source projects you’d like to talk about?

Nope. I try to give constructive criticism to Robotlegs team, Flex SDK & Spoon team where applicable.

what are your thoughts on the rebirth of JavaScript (and the HTML spec/family)?

The pro’s: more buzz around tech, more people capable of building better experiences on the web, more money funneled into our industry.

The con’s: a lot of insecurity surfaced amongst Flash/Flex devs, some of which is unfounded, a lot of FUD & unnecessary mud-slinging thrown around, and a TON of beating dead horeses that doesn’t seem to have much mindshare affects. It’s also surfaced a bigger problem with a continuing reduction of Flash Player’s viability ecspecially with mobile taking off without Flash’s help. This is sad, and our rage should be directed at Adobe. That said, the damage has been done, and we’re losing a few great devs through attrition, lack of passion in just Flash/Flex, or just going with the flow and enjoying trying something mobile centric.

what version of flex are your working with/targeting? 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5?

4.5 and 4.5.1

what other programming languages do you know/use?

I’ve dabbled in a ton, but I’d say Python and Lua are my 2 passions right now beyond ActionScript.

what do you do when you’re not writing code?

Spend time with family, gaming, movies, and running my business related tasks that aren’t coding related (phone calls, emails, managing other sub-contractors/co-workers, hustling, etc).

anything else you’d like to mention? blogs, sites, people, tools?

My Company: http://webappsolution.com
My Blog: http://jessewarden.com
Robotlegs: http://robotlegs.org
Corona: http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/

any questions i should add to this interview?

I think doing future projections is hard. That said, getting people’s input on 1. how mobile affects their work and 2. what Adobe needs to do to innovate.

This presentation introduces you to the benefits of Test Driven Development and teaches the fundamentals of TDD practice through a TDD Kata. A Kata is an idea borrowed from martial arts – an exercise done regularly in order to hone the practitioner’s skills – in this case the test-error-code-fail-code-pass cycle. Clearly testing offers reduction of defects and increased code confidence, but this presentation will illustrate how truly Test *Driven* Development brings much deeper benefits. You’ll leave the presentation with a TDD Kata that you can practice to increase your TDD skills and speed over time, and an understanding of why taking time to build TDD in to your workflow pays dividends.

Here’s a link to more info about the presentation and how to attend:

http://bniria.groups.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=post.display&postid=36277

See you there

After returning from 360 one of my next tasks was actually to implement localization into the new architecture I’m putting together. BabelFX is great because is uses an IoC approach to inject your view layer with localized textual values, pulled from resource bundles. It’s nice because you aren’t required to have a bunch of ResourceManager calls in your codebase. You simply add IDs to your view layer controls and components and BabelFX will then inject the various properties on them with the localized strings.

I’m still getting everything set up and have yet to explore the more sophisticated features available through BabelFx but so far it’s working great! Everything boils down to a Map that you create that basically maps properties from your resource bundles to controls in your view layer. It’s basically a Context and somewhat like a Front Controller. For large, complex applications you can use multiple Contexts to keep things organized and clean.

I’d recommend that you take a minute and check out BabelFX if you are localizing any Flex apps. It can be added to existing applications or used from the start of the development cycle. You can grab the source here, get the SWC here and I’d recommend starting with this example to see the uber basics.

I’d like to thank Thomas Burleson, the author of BabelFx for his time and help this week. He was very generous and gave me a hand getting things up and running. Thanks again man!! Really appreciate the assistance!!!

Thomas should be posting a new tutorial and video for getting things up and running with BabelFx soon. I’ll also probably put together a MEGA simple example sometime in the near future.