name:

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

I started playing with Flash around 2000, but didn’t seriously get coding till around 2003/04. I started coding because I wanted to make games.

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?

I don’t even know what that really means. My coding style and methods have grown out of endless experimenting and testing, and speed of development is paramount – TDD sounds like something I’d prefer someone else to do.

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

I’ve developed my own game framework that has evolved over time through trial and error, recently I’ve started using Flare3D as a core part of my rendering process and that’s caused me to restructure things quite a bit. It would probably be good for me to learn more about what makes a good framework, but to be honest I haven’t really needed to – my games seem to work fine.

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

Yups, I have 10 games published to the Android Market, 3 to iOS (with 2 more under review), and 6 for the BlackBerry Playbook. Adobe setting up Flash to be published as AIR apps I can sell has been huge for me – although it’s not without its limitations or problems. I’ve rapidly become a multi platform developer with minimal effort

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

I currently use Flash Builder 4.5.1 – and the only plugin I use is ‘Flex Formatter’ – I am a very messy coder and I use this plugin constantly to clean up my work. http://sourceforge.net/projects/flexformatter/

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

I use the Flash IDE to create assets .swc’s and as games need visuals and sound (and I make most of the assets myself), I also use quite a few programs – Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Media Encoder, Sound Booth and a bunch of smaller software packages for a range of other things.

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

That’s a little difficult to answer, twitter and google plus are my sources of info and links. And the sources come from just about everyone I follow. I no longer regularly visit sites or even use rss feeds … social media ftw!

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

I’ve only attended one conference this year, WebDu (http://www.webdu.com.au/) and I was a speaker during the keynote, showing of some of the cool work people are doing with Stage3D. I’m not planning on going to any other conferences this year, prefering to focus on creating work at the moment. I may attend some local stuff, but time is always tight and money too. Generally the only time I’ll attend a conference is as a speaker as I can’t afford the ticket prices. If there was more gaming related stuff in my area I might go to more.

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

Yeah I’m working on a new game at the moment, a sequel to one of my fairly popular games. I may change the name but at the moment it’s called ‘Meteor Storm 2’. It’s my first game to be made with 3D assets and is heavily using Stage3D (using the Flare3D engine). Here’s a recent post I made about it – http://pixelpaton.com/?p=4234

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

I think it’s great that tools are evolving and taking over tedious parts that Flash has been used for. Other languages don’t interest me personally, but I think competition and choice are an important part of technology. Everything changes, or it gets stagnant.

what other programming languages do you know/use?

I keep a very narrow focus, as I decide what I work on and the tools I use I find it much more efficient to specialise in one language and just focus on creating content.

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

I read, draw, sketch, paint, ride my motorbike, run/jog, play with my dog, do the housework (I work at home), drink too much booze, listen to thotskee’s tunes and try to grow personally. Motivation and focus are always a challenge so I work a lot on keeping the momentum up.

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

Yeah my blog: http://pixelpaton.com/ – I post a lot of my work here, as I work on it. I try to share what I do partly to feed my own motivation (feedback is awesome to do this) and to help inspire others. If I can make games – you can make games.
My google plus account is where I now ‘tweet’ (using a service to push out to twitter), there’s a bunch of links there that people may be interested in: http://plus.google.com/114101814013862230773/about

name:

when did you start flash/flex/AIR/AS dev?
Dabbled a little in timeline animation with Flash from 2005, got into some timeline-based AS3 in 2008, then started Flex Development in 2009 with Flex 3.5

are you practicing TDD? why/why not?

Unfortunately my previous employer was not interested in TDD so I haven’t had any practical exposure to it as yet. Seeing as I’m freelancing now, it’s fairly high up my ‘to learn’ list and I’m just waiting for a suitable project to get stuck in and give it a go.

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

I’ve only used Cairngorm so far, once again due to the choices of my employer. Based on the examples I’ve seen, articles I’ve read and opinions of other Flex devs who I have a lot of respect for, RobotLegs looks like it will be my framework of choice for any future projects.

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

No not yet, I think I’m a bit of a purist at heart and would rather develop any mobile projects natively if possible. That said, Flex/AIR for mobile has come a long way very quickly so I will be keeping my eye on its performance and capabilities. Never say never!

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

I use Flash Builder 4.5 with no plugins. Honestly, the lack of plugins and the choice of IDE is simply because I have been too slack to try out any others thus far. There may be better options but Flash Builder works for me!

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

None really, haven’t seen the need. Just Photoshop/Fireworks for graphics bits and pieces – exporting FXG from Fireworks has come in handy a few times for complex skinning.

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

I’m really not much into reading blogs, I always wait for interesting articles to be tweeted before reading them. The only blog I intentionally visit is Stray’s (http://www.xxcoder.net) where she writes often about the psychology of programming and also some more advanced development techniques, always in a way which is easy to read and understand.
I won’t list all the incredible twitter people here as there are just too many, but Twitter is easily my number one source of support and inspiration.

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

So far this year I’ve attended Webstock (http://www.webstock.org.nz), WebDU (http://www.webdu.com.au), WDCNZ (http://wdcnz.com) and Bar Camp Auckland (http://bca.geek.nz) which are all annual web/tech events and all absolutely worth attending. There’s also Flash Camp Auckland (http://flashcamp.co.nz) coming up next month which I am helping to organise, Creative Camp Wellington (http://creativecamp.co.nz) in October and cfObjective(ANZ) (http://www.cfobjective.com.au) in November, all three of which I am supposedly speaking at but have yet to come up with topics for…

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

Right now I’m working on two client projects. One is a website involving a YouTube video player, so have been ‘having fun’ with that API the last couple of weeks, and the other is a web-based admin for an iPad application, which has been great for experience with PHP, HTML/CSS and jQuery which I am really enjoying – quite a lot more fun than I had expected, in fact.

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

That’s a tough question. I have been a web developer before, and it was a deliberate choice to move away from web and into Flex development. I think the capabilities of JavaScript in relation to Flash are immensely over-hyped at this point, but technology is advancing rapidly and this won’t be the case for long. As Flash Platform developers we have a great opportunity here – moving from AS3 to JavaScript is not a massive jump really, and we have the advantage of experience building apps which many web devs don’t have. I personally have quite a lot of interest in ExtJS and Sencha Touch as mature app development frameworks for JavaScript. The similarities to Flex make them very appealing.

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

I always keep up with the latest release version of Flex for new projects, so everything is 4.5 or newer at this point.

what other programming languages do you know/use?

I have a fair amount of experience in HTML and CSS dev, if you can call those programming languages. I’m currently studying so I’m learning Java through university, and have been learning PHP and JavaScript/jQuery through a side project. AS3 was my first ‘real’ programming language, so now I’ve got that one under my belt I’m really excited about learning new languages. The similarities and differences between them are quite fascinating, and if you’re not learning anything you’re probably not having fun!

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

Attend pretty much every community event, meetup or conference I can get to. Meeting people is great fun and it’s always good to get new perspective on the world and the tech industry. I’m also currently doing a lot of reading and attending class in between my coding. I love getting out and doing extreme-type activities like snowboarding, rock climbing and windsurfing which are a great contrast to sitting at a desk all day, but unfortunately my freelancing-student life means there hasn’t been a lot of that lately!

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

Oh yes! I’m a real twitterbug so it’s the easiest place to find me (http://twitter.com/tanya) but I’m also on LinkedIn if that’s more your style (http://nz.linkedin.com/in/tanyagraynz) Please do say hello!

what’s your favorite animal?

Lizards! I even have a little lizard mascot who travels around with me  http://twitpic.com/5ormym

Here’s some more info about the book pulled from Amazon.

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

I’ve been using SourceMate for a little while and there are some really powerful, time saving features. There are some handy functions like comment/uncomment all for classes. This is a good time saver. There are some really powerful refactoring tools and also the ability to create ActionScript and MXML code templates.

The plug-in is available in Flash Builder as a top level menu and also provides other integration points in the right click menu and other areas. Some cool features are: the ability to generate getter/setters for class properties, generate toString methods, change method signature, convert local variable to field (class property), extract method/interface/constant/local variable, override implement methods, and more!

SourceMate provides the ability to generate Ant build scripts and also generate and build ASDoc.

Flash Builder is great on its own but SourceMate adds some really great, time saving functionality. I’m still exploring it and have yet to really become a power user, there’s still a TON of stuff that I plan on rolling into my Flex development workflow.

You can get a free 30 day demo and the price is more than reasonable for the power that you get.

I highly recommend stopping by the Element River site, downloading the trial, checking out some of their screenshots and videos and giving SourceMate a try. Five stars!!!

I’d like to point out a couple things. 1.) These are all in good fun. No offence is intended. I try not to take myself too seriously, the Senior Developer poster is targeted directly at myself. 2.) At the moment I’m just pulling images from google so I don’t have the rights to them. If  you see an image that you DO have rights to and do not want it used just contact me and I’ll take it down. I’m not selling these or anything just fyi. If there is enough interest I’ll start using images I can get the rights to and start selling them, time will tell… Post a comment if you’d be interested in buying these.

With that said let’s get to the visuals! Here’s the new posters, enjoy!!

Rather than continuing to scream in vein at my monitor when encountering some of the stellar code people write I’ve come up with a better solution. The Motivational Programming Poster series!!

Here are a few of my initial posters. More to come. Enjoy!

Oh and by the way get the book called Clean Code and READ IT PLEASE…PRETTY PLEASE, WITH SUGAR AND A CHERRY ON TOP!!!

Of course being a “Flex guy” I used Flex / Flash Builder, AS3 and Flex Unit for the TDD Kata. There are a few different Kata’s that you can practice but I went with the first one that I found on google, (StringCalculator). It seemed to be pretty widely accepted and practiced and from my point of view came from a pretty reliable source. When doing TDD Kata you timebox the exercise. This is to help you increase in speed as you continue to practice. I used to study Kempo and actually did real Kata’s at one point in time so I kinda get what it’s all about. It’s a way to repetitively practice something until you get to the point where you’re not really thinking about the actions anymore, you’re just executing the Kata. My first pass at the StringCalculator Kata went so-so. I wasn’t able to finish it, but didn’t really expect to. I anticipate that as I continue to practice the Kata I’ll increase my speed and also improve my ability to think in a TDD fashion.

TDD is great because it really forces you to think through the code you’re writing before you write it. This helps keep things somewhat in control. Rather than just pounding out line after line of code to “get it done” you think forward about potential issues and shortcomings of the functionality you’re creating. In addition having a reliable, well thought out Test Suite will ensure that you can refactor your code without the fear of negatively affecting other areas of the codebase.

I’ve posted a video of my first TDD Kata session. It’s about 30 minutes long and it’s really large (1920×1080). I left Flash Builder maximized while recording and have a decent sized monitor so my apologies if it’s hard to see what’s going on. I’ll set up a recording region next time with the screen recording software and try to keep things a little smaller. I hope to keep doing this Kata as much as possible, at the very minimum once a week. I’ll post updates to the blog with my experience and progress and post some more recordings as I improve. Hopefully this post has turned you on to something new or provided you with some laughs as you watch me code through the Kata

Flash and the City Conference Blog

http://blog.flashandthecity.com/

Flash and the City Speakers

http://blog.flashandthecity.com/speakers/

Elad Elrom’s AIR 2.0 Cookbook recipes (thanks again dude!)

http://elromdesign.com/blog/2010/02/01/10-recipes-on-adc-cookbooks-covering-air-20-new-apis/

AIR 2.0 info on the Adobe Labs site

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/

Exploring the new file capabilities in Adobe AIR 2

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/exploring_file_capabilities.html

StorageVolume class info

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/filesystem/StorageVolume.html

StorageVolumeInfo class info

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/filesystem/StorageVolumeInfo.html

StorageVolumeChangeEvent class info

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/events/StorageVolumeChangeEvent.html

Interacting with Native Processes in AIR 2.0

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/quickstart/interacting_with_native_process.html

AIR 2.0 New Features Overview

http://www.infoq.com/articles/air-20-new-features

AIR 2.0 FAQ on Adobe Labs

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR_2:Developer_FAQ

New Features in AIR 2.0 on Adobe Labs

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR_2:Release_Notes#New_Features_in_AIR_2__beta_2

AIR 2 Enhancements Complete Overview

http://www.insideria.com/2009/10/air-2-enhancements-complete-ov.html

Using the Microphone capabilities in Adobe AIR 2 beta

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/using_mic_api.html

TouchEvent class info

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/events/TouchEvent.html

TouchscreenType

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/system/TouchscreenType.html

MultitouchInputMode

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/ui/MultitouchInputMode.html

Multitouch

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/ui/Multitouch.html

TransformGestureEvent

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/events/TransformGestureEvent.html