Comments on: Re-invent Yourself: Flash to Flex Developer

By: Daniel Freeman

Daniel Freeman — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 05:18:01 +0000

You’re not the only one Jesse. I could identify with a lot of what you wrote. Like you, I’m not ‘passionate’ about working on mudane projects. It’s a bit like a Sumuri honour thing :) The master will not rise to a challenge that is not worthy. It’s a common problem with intelligent people.

Central excited me. I could see incredible potential. I invested a lot of effort into seeing how far I could push the capabilities of the primitive prototype, with a view to what I might acheive in the future. Being an early adopter is a leap of faith. A potential waste of time and money and a risk to self esteem. Minor fame and noteriety may last only as long as your technology is in vogue. It’s not your objective anyway. Like any artist, you strive to attain your own vision.

The problem with the Flash Platform is that it’s not complete. In particular, the ‘service’ layer of the Architecture isn’t finished. (see Kevin Lynche’s white paper, that has just been updated). The service layer is the bit where the services get sold to the customer. It creates the demand for stuff to be created in the first place. Let’s hope that Macromedia get it in place soon – or at least tell us when it will happen. Considering the risk that we’re taking, Macromedia should make more effort to keep us within the loop.

By: Brian Deitte

Brian Deitte — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 19:44:31 +0000

To resay what everyone else has said, you’ve already reinvented, no? I could probably only name 10 people off the top of my head that work on Flex outside of Macromedia, so your name is certainly out there. Just keep doing everything you are doing.

By: Jason Merrill

Jason Merrill — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 00:27:43 +0000

Jesse, you’ll be happy, Golden Retrievers make GREAT dogs.

By: Rahsun McAfee

Rahsun McAfee — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 16:43:12 +0000

Dude, sounds like full circle to me it’s a repeat of your past. I remember you back in college coming to me with something called ‘Flash’. We all were like WTH is THAT?! You were all hyped about it being a big deal it had small file size and how we animators could make our Final Project Animations fit on a floppy disk. I remember back then you also kicked serious butt in Director with advanced Lingo. I agree with Patrick. You are an early adopter dude. You don’t really need to reinvent yourself. Just be yourself and the metamorphisis just happens. You stuck with Flash sense……forever as I can remember. And ultimately became a guru. Hats off cause it can be hard for many people to focus sooo hard on 1 techonlogy and go for perfection for such a long period of time. Now Flex has your world on fire and all I can say is here we go again :) Enjoy the ride man!

By: Kenny Bunch

Kenny Bunch — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 14:34:48 +0000

Daniel,
He did.

Jesse,
As for the people around, I’ll point something out, to illustrate how those opinions can change. You remember that day I came by your desk and was talking about how they had improved Flex with 1.5? I mentioned what they had done, MM was closing in on creating a more logical application solution, but pointed out some remaining flaws (which alot of been addressed in 2.0). You and Mr. Campbell slammed me for my opinion. 1 year later, you are evangelizing it, and Matt (BELIEVE IT OR NOT, laughin…I know its hard), thinks Flash/Flex is actually a viable solution. So believe in what you are doing, and if what you are doing is actually something worthwhile, everyone else will to. You are in a good position man and are where you want to be, stop stressing ;)