It’s long overdue. Flash Builder 4 is a mess, and hopefully fixing/improving the following items will bring it up to par.  If you are a product engineer, skip the intro.

Problem

Flash Builder 4 is a great leap forward from Flex Builder 3.  It’s not any large features, but rather a bunch of little, consistent things that lead to a pleasant experience.

Years of neglecting other areas, as well as blatant missing features that open source alternatives & competing IDE’s have makes me question if there is any serious money behind Flash Builder.  I know the effort and will are there; even after distancing myself from the Adobe product teams the last 3 years, when I do return via email/Twitter, they still have great attitudes, and want to continually improve their tools/runtimes.

Bottom line, I and many others are more productive using open source alternatives to Flash Builder, and usually only keep Flash Builder around for 3 key features (Library project linking, Design View, and superior MXML handling, specially with states).  There are a lot of common workflows that seem to be ignored, and even after 4 years of the community bringing them up, they still aren’t remedied.

I outline the problems below with potential solutions.  Some solutions are actually easy; you just copy open source implementations.

Call To Action

I cannot promote Flash Builder 4 to my clients, nor will I spend another dime on Flash Builder 4/5 licenses until Adobe takes Flash Builder seriously by making 5 on par with open source alternatives.  While I respect that some of the blame lies on the Eclipse foundation, Adobe clearly thinks there is value there if they base a Designer specific tool’s future, Catalyst, on top of Eclipse’s architecture.

I, and millions of others sent a message to Adobe with CS4.  We were sick and tired of incomplete features, bugs, and crashes.  Adobe then laid of 10% of their staff due to poor CS3 sales… even though 1 month prior their CEO was on stage at the Adobe MAX conference saying sales were doing well.  They did this again the following year.  You can blame it on the recession.  You can blame it on a public company doing what most do in down times; laying off staff to boost their stock value when dividends are nowhere to be seen because there is no forthcoming company revenue.

…or you can take responsibility for your bad software, and fix it.  I was a devoted customer until CS3; we fought with our wallets, and our wallets won.   Which sucks.  My career and life are based on Adobe’s product line.  When you, Adobe, suck, life sucks.  Not just for me, for the world.  You’re doing important work.

The following are problems with potential solutions.

1. Code Hints

Flash Develop, FDT, IntelliJ, and Visual Studio all give code hints for your classes, methods, and variables WHILE YOU TYPE.  No period needs to be post-reached, not keyboard command; it just shows you a drop down WHILE YOU TYPE.

Worse, if you misspell something and back up, most of the time the drop down will go away, forcing you to spend more time to get the code hint to come back up… or just say eff it and code like your in AS1 (or Python).

This should be top priority; I understand if you’re waiting on Eclipse to add this.

2. Automatic Class Importing

Flash Develop and FDT both auto-import for you while you type and hit enter.  IntelliJ gives you the option to hit Alt+Enter to import a class of your choice, or perhaps define it which is even cooler.  Know what Flash Builder does?  Doesn’t compile, and blames it on you.  Gee, thanks $500 IDE.  I paid you $500 bucks to bitch at me and not auto-import my class you know full well where it is.

My code is littered with var a:SomeClass.  If you go on a blank line, and type var a, it’s the quickest way to get the class drop down.  From there, you can hit enter which’ll auto import the class.  You then delete the line.

Half of the problem is that the drop down is just flaky; miss it, and it won’t import your class.  Just start typing in a non-start line place, and Flash Builder won’t even give you a code hint.  Import yourself.

Please do a better job of auto-importing.  Level 1 is to get what Flash Develop/FDT do, Level 2 is to match IntelliJ’s intelligent options.

3. Slow Code Hinting Response & Mispellings

Part of the problem is the code hinting is just slow.  IntelliJ, which is slower than Eclipse, still seems to consistently work.  While Flash Builder 4 has significant improvements for misspellings over Flex Builder 3, ESPECIALLY in the class creation dialogue, for the code hints, 9 times outta 10, if you mispell “Graa” instead of “Grap” for Graphics, good bye dialogue, please start again.

If you can’t increase the responsiveness, then just be more forgiving with spelling, or just fix #1, and you should be good.

4. Stop Being ActionScript Racist: ActionScript vs. Flex

You all have been doing this crap since Flash 8.  Back then, you’d show AS3 code hints for AS2; even help would show AS3 when I specifically set AS2 in the publish settings.  Back then, QA was sincerely concerned, but it still shipped.  “We don’t want you to use AS2 anyway”.

When people like Keith Peters, Steven Sacks, Grant Skinner, and Darron Schall bitch about it, and you do nothing, that’s a serious communication problem… and makes me question if the assholes who used to run Flash Media Server 1 & Flex 1 teams are now running Flash Builder team.  Aka, “Screw you, your ideas make us and our shareholders no money, please DIAF.”

When I create an ActionScript 3 project, and go to import flash.display.Graphics, but you give me a code hint spark.primitives.Graphic, I want to throw a nuke at San Fran.  It’s a waste a time, confusing, and causes compilation problems.  It also leads to subtle, yet horrible problems where Flex dependencies get leaked into potentially awesome AS3 only libraries.  as3corelib is a perfect example.  Was pimp… then someone accidentally imported mx.formatters.DateFormatter… AND YOU’RE FUCKED!

If I create an AS3 project, get your damn Flex outta my code.  I’m Jesse Warden, you know I love Flex, especially 4 now that I’ve drunken the Kool-Aid.  But when I’m coding an AS3 only AIR project for Android to help promote your technology, and your own IDE starts getting all AS3 racist on me, it makes me RAAAGGGEEE!!!

5. Linking Projects: Unit & Visual/Functional Testing

Linking projects is just garbage and does not work.  One of the greatest features you all implemented in Flex 2 was Library Projects.  Using Library projects, you can also make Design View quite useful in Flex 3.  You just build all your GUI in the Lib, and implement with application logic in your main project.  Since it’s a Library project that’s pre-compiled, all your graphics show up nicely in Design View.

…if you want to unit test or do visual tests, however, it’s a nightmare.  In this case, I have 3 options (3rd is make your own command line build script for mxmlc).

I can either integrate all my unit testing code & framework libraries into the project itself, or setup a new Flex/ActionScript project specifically for just testing the code.  If you’ve ever worked with a large team, you know that the 1st doesn’t work.  All someone has to do is get out of sync and/or break the build, and poof, productivity grinds to a halt.  Broken builds, source control/SubClipse can get out of whack, or strange conflicts can result.  Things happen, no big deal.

The big deal is you can lessen the impact by creating new projects so developers can work on their projects and do integration testing with their new code on their own terms when they are ready to lessen the impact on the team.  It’s a very simple thing to do.

The problem is, this sucks.  Linking to Library projects is magic; it’s why people still keep Flash Builder around when they primarily use FDT.  You just click the “Add Project” button for Library paths, and BOOM, you’re linked.  It automatically recompiles your SWC, and copies the fresh mofo over.  No manual refreshing, no Project Clean n’ Pray… it just works.  THIS is where I’m glad some of my $5oo bucks went.

For projects?  No such love.  I have to manually point the source to the other project’s source.  While in the same Workspace, apparently Eclipse doesn’t think that’s useful and makes me manually navigate there via Finder/Explorer.  Worse, you have to do it AGAIN for your libs folder since it’s a source path link and not a real project reference.

…and it gets worse.  Because it’s a source path to an open project, Eclipse gets confused sometimes.   You’ll run into situations where you can have to “MyCustomButton.as” files open.  Which tab is which?  Why is one “out of sync”?  How come sometimes I compile and run and the code hasn’t changed?

This is even more important for components you’re testing in AIR projects.  Most AIR projects have complicated bootstrapping, so it’s not very straightforward to just test a new AIR application (which creates yet another AIR config xml file).  It’s easier just to create a quick ActionScript/Flex project, and test the components in isolation.  Quicker to solve bugs too.

Please fix linking projects (Library projects work just fine).

6. Design View

What the hell did you do!?  This worked fine in 3.  In 4, sometimes my drops are ignored.  My pixel perfect placements take 3 drags to get right.  Sometimes it just gets locked up, and I have to manually hit the refresh button.  Based on Twitter, there are only 3 other people in the world who use Design View; the rest are crayon pushers who use Catalyst, so maybe that’s why.  Still, if you don’t want us to use it, then make it like the Behaviors Panel in Flash, and REMOVE IT.

7. Proactive Error Checking

mxmlc’s incremental compilation is rad.  I know those coming from PowerBuilder, Java, and other large Enterprise systems which have tools that are pretty smart at only re-compiling what is needed are somewhat critical of mxmlc’s speed.  Whatever, if you worked on projects in Flex Builder 2, and then did projects in Flex Builder 3, it was light years better.  If you did work in Flash IDE, then went to MTASC, then went “back” to Flex Builder 2, then 3… it was UBER-light years better.

That said, the background compilation for errors doesn’t really do much.  IntelliJ really wins here in making use of the full IDE to HELP you, vs. just inform you’re screwed, no compilation for you.  Right now, most messages in Flash Builder’s mxmlc errors are good enough, and clicking on the error to go to the line is great.

However, IntelliJ makes the word/area red, puts red tick marks on the right side to indicate where in the class the error is, and even underlines the tab’s class name itself to imply “this class has an error”.  That’s 3 visual indicators each covering a different spacial area all to be proactive to help you FIND problems.  Even cooler, IntelliJ has some helpful options to import a class you forgot, show a possible mispelling, or allow you to create a class that doesn’t exist yet.

These common problems are old.  IntelliJ has found ways to help you solve these common problems.  I fail to see why at version 4 we’re still ways away from this.  All we get a list of red dots plus reasons away from the code itself and everyone I know ignores all of them except for the 1st.  Context is key, and in-code errors plus helpful solutions would be great.

8. Copy Paste

How come I can’t copy paste from Flash Builder to Flash?  Some programs just seem to ignore the clipboard from Flash Builder.  Others on Twitter have reported the clipboard in Eclipse is reclusive for them as well.

9. Pasting Multiple Files

I have flexunit4.swc, hamcrest.swc, mockolate.swc, greensock.swc.  I copy them from my Finder.  I paste them into my libs folder inside of Flash Builder’s project panel.  Only flexunit4.swc makes it. God dammit.

Please fix this.

Conclusions

If you fix the above, you’ll start to become on par with Flash Develop/Intellij/FDT.  Once you do that, I can justify spending $500 again for an IDE.  Right now, beyond MXML handling, states preview, and consistent Library Project linking, I’m not sure why I paid for in my upgrade from 3 to 4.  Whatever I can do to NOT use Flash Builder 4, I’ll do.  Either you all were rushed, you don’t have enough money behind the project, or y’all have never used another IDE beyond Flex Builder to code ActionScript.

If you didn’t listen to anything I said, then for Flash Builder 5, please:

1. copy Flash Develop’s code hinting
2. copy FDT’s code gen
3. copy IntelliJ’s proactive error handling & auto-importing
4. copy FDT’s class re-factoring
5. fix Design View

Please keep in mind the following is full of (accurate) generalities to make things more concise and easier to understand.  The Flash/Flex community is very diverse, and as such there are many exceptions to the below.

Nomenclature

W2: You’re employer takes taxes out of your paycheck.

1099: You are responsible for all taxes owed on your revenue.

W9: Like 1099 for companies working with other companies (as opposed to an individual like 1099). Also know an as Corp to Corp/C2C.

What is a Flex Developer?

A Flex Developer is a programmer who utilizes the Adobe Flex SDK to create either web based applications, often called Rich Internet Applications, that run in Flash Player or desktop applications running in the Adobe AIR runtime.  They code in the ActionScript 3 programming language, and often utilize Flash Builder 4 as their IDE.  Their work usually ends up being a SWF file that runs in the Adobe Flash Player, and is accompanied by a little HTML and JavaScript.

A lot of Flex developers come from traditional programming/computer science backgrounds, as opposed to art/design agency backgrounds like Flash Developers do.  Combined with the fact that the Flex community is diverse as well as continuing to utilize other technologies, many will utilize other IDE’s or a combination there of.  These include Flash Develop, FDT, Emacs, and IntelliJ amongst others.

They also utilize MXML and CSS in their work, and sometimes utilize other design tools such as Adobe’s Photoshop and/or Illustrator to integrate designs into their work.  A select few make use of Flash Catalyst to integrate complex designs into their Flex work.

Flash is not Flex

While Flash Developers also code in ActionScript 3, and deploy SWF’s to the Flash Player, they are not Flex Developers.  Flash Developers will utilize the Adobe Flash IDE, traditionally a design & animation tool turned hybrid programmer tool.  While many are capable of creating many of the same applications that Flex Developers can create, the clientele, not the developers are the defining factor here.

Flash Developers tend to work on smaller projects with shorter time frames, and often have a lot more design.  The projects’ development span from 1 day to 6 weeks.  Most do not have experience creating Enterprise applications.  Enterprise applications refer to the length of development, often from 4 months to 18 months or more.  This deadline differentiator belies a significant amount of skill sets that Flex Developers tend to have more often than Flash Developers (not always which adds to the confusion).  Famous keywords include OOP, Continuos Integration, TDD/Test Driven Development, Design Patterns, Frameworks, et al.

To add more to the confusion, many Flash Developers employ many of the same technologies & methodologies Flex Developers utilize.  These include using alternative IDE’s, using the mxmlc compiler included in the Flex SDK, and utilizing frameworks such as Cairngorm/PureMVC/Swiz/Robotlegs.

If a client asks you for a Flex Developer and you send them a Flash Developer, you are making a huge mistake.

It all comes down to the typical clientelle the develeper gets.  If their past projects last 4 months or longer, they can probably cut it.

Different Types of Flex Developers

There are basically 4 types of Flex Developers.

1. Junior
2. Mid-Level
3. Senior
4. Architect

A Junior is often someone with little experience, whether that’s in Flex, or in just programming in general.  Fresh out of school, or just starting a new career.  They’ve never done professional Flex Development, or little of consequence.

A Mid-Level Dev is often someone with some good experience, but either requires direction, or does not currently lead a team in development.  Leading a team here doesn’t mean management; it means providing technical & architectural direction to the rest of the team to ensure the project moves along smoothly.  Often times, you’ll have senior/architect developers from other languages who are learning Flex for the first time.  While they bring their often vast experiences, Flex is a new runtime and programming model, and as such, they are considered mid-level, and should not be leading a team.  Either way, they only have a couple projects under their belt, or a lot of projects not in Flex.

A Senior Dev is someone with a lot of experience and is familiar with current, best practices.  They have a long list of projects under their belt and a lot of experience.  They can be depended upon to develop Flex software successfully if setup to succeed.

An Architect is someone who could design the entire application, from scratch, correctly.  Often, these individuals will do back-end technologies as well to ensure they have the whole picture of how everything works together.  They can either lead the development team, or share leadership duties with other senior level devs.  There is crossover between Architects and Senior devs.

How Flex Developers Work

Flex Developers work just like any other normal person.  Some are W2, some are 1099, and some are W9.  You can also find all 4 skillets doing all 3 payment types.  Most Junior and Mid-Level are W2.  Most Senior and Architect’s are either employed at large companies that can afford their rates, or are through one of the larger consulting firms.

That said, finding a good W2 Flex Developer is extremely hard.  Most Senior and Architect level developers are 1099.  That, or they are working with consulting firms who often keep them busy.  Thus, getting them to lower their rates so your firm can take a higher cut to work on a potentially not so savory project is hard.  While the larger consulting firms do not always provide the top projects, because of the brands they develop, it’s easier for them to find the work that would interest Senior/Architect Flex Developers.  This is yet another challenge for recruiters.  The best thing you can do is be as concise and truthful (NDA’s nonwithstanding) as you can.  If you find a Senior developer between projects, they need to eat just like Junior’s do, thus this is a great time to strike.

Remember, even if they aren’t a fit, they may know someone who is.  The Flex industry is small, and it’s all about timing.

Where Flex Developers Work

With W2, it’s implied you’ll work on-site.  As long as the company has benefits, W2’s are sometimes willing to relocate.

This is complete opposite with 1099/W9 developers, especially Senior/Architects.

Most Senior and Architect 1099/W9 developers prefer telecommuting.  Many aren’t willing to relocate, although many are willing to do some travel.  Sending an email asking for W2/relocation is a sure fire way to get your email/LinkedIn/Tweet ignored by such individuals.  If you can find out that those individuals are in fact senior, (via Blogs/Twitter/LinkedIn) a phone call is often better because you can more quickly respond that “1099 can be worked out”.

The telecommuting part is tricky.  Almost all clients, especially those large enough to afford Senior/Architect Flex devs, will not blindly accept telecommuting.  Often, the engagement is of a consulting nature, and many non-progressive companies view remote with insecurity, and thus not solving their immediate cluster fire.

Rather than state that the position does not support telecommuting (unless you know for a FACT it does not), explain to the potential hiree that it’s up them to negotiate telecommuting terms.  There aren’t many Enterprise sized Flex projects that are 100% remote.  It’s MORE than reasonable for a client to expect a Senior/Architect to be on-site for the first 2 weeks, during milestones, and then towards the end of the engagement.  That’s 15 days over the course of 4 months: completely MORE than reasonable.  A freelancer/consultant almost can always work out those agreements with the client.

That said, it is a major risk, and I’ve seen people walk away from gigs 2 weeks in because these terms couldn’t be worked out which then puts your firm in an uncomfortable position.  I recognize that educating the client on such things is challenging.  Usually talking to the person running the project directly ensures you can get an unofficial yes to assuage your potential Flex candidate.

Rates

Rates are all over the map.  That said, the cream of the crop has extremely high expectations, especially those who live in coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles, or who are just in the know of what the going rate for their skills are.  Here are some good metrics I’ve seen.

Those who work with consulting firms, or have experience as such, will sometimes expect higher rates.  As such, they build up a common perception that they’ll never get work from recruiters, so just keep this mind.

Prima Donnas?

By this point, you may have developed the opinion that high-end Flex Developers are Prima Donnas.  That isn’t true.

This is what is true: First, they know they are rare.  It’s way easier to be a rockstar in the Flex world than the Java world.  As such, some recognize the rules of supply and demand, and capitalize on it.

Second, the Flex community is small in comparison to the Java, .NET, and JavaScript ones.  This close knit nature allows the free exchange of gigs, recruiters, and general news.  Since Flex developers have an easier access to others in the Flex community through Twitter and Facebook, and it’s easier for them to find gigs, W2/1099, on their own without the need of a 3rd party.  This expectation, real or not, affects their communication with those offering sub-optimal rates with sub-optimal conditions (W2, on-site, etc).

Third, Flex is hot and new.  This means that clients adopting it tend to have an ounce of progressiveness somewhere.  Therefore, if you pitch the position as anything beyond hot and new, Flex devs will listen to the alarm bells going off, warning them that their attention spans may not surivive, and thus look for more lucrative offers.

What’s a Recruiter to Do?

As a recruiter, there are a few things you can do.

First, recognize the community is small, and pitch this to your client.  Unlike Java where you have to weed through hundreds of unqualified individuals, Flex has a way smaller pool.  Yes, it’s growing, but it’s still small in comparison.

Second, recognize that you only need to establish a good relationship with 1 known Flex Developer to gain access to the rest.  No, I’m not talking about those using Monster/Dice, I mean the Senior/Architects you’d kill to give to your clients.  Often these people participate in some fashion with the social networking scene.

Third, and yes, I recognize this is hard: you need to sell the project.  Using a bunch of adjectives in a long email has the opposite effect of what you’re looking for.  Instead, see if you can get some more real details that HR people from large companies will never give you.  I don’t care how you do it, just do it.  An example could include calling up the company HR:

“Yes, hi, this is Jamie from Tech Recruiting.  I was hoping to get some more technical details that weren’t included on your candidate sheet.  Could you perhaps let me ask the Director of Engineering 2 questions I had a variety of potential candidates ask me?”

This gets you to the person who’s hiring, and hopefully can get him/her to deluge you with the technology stack they using.  THESE are the keywords you want to put in your emails.

“Large company doing cool, new things with Flex” == pathetic.

“Real-time data using Blaze DS with extremely custom UI created in Catalyst” == fuck yes!

They wouldn’t call it work if it were easy.

Conclusions

Hopefully the above gives you an idea of what a Flex Developer is, how they are different from Flash Developers, and how you can lure them in.  Flex Developers tend to build Enterprise Applications where as Flash Developers do not.  Ensure that the candidate has past clients/work that lasted longer than 3 months.

A lot of the senior Flex Developers that are known in the industry are 1099 only, and many only want to do 90% telecommuting.  These things are all about timing and who you know.  You can’t help the first excluding being early.  For the latter, try to get as close to a “negotiable” as you can to lure potential hiree’s in.

While rates are often out of your control, it’s important to set your client’s expectations.  Flex Development is still new and lucrative, and the rates some people charge are outrageous.  The recession helped a little… but not much.

A lot of Flex Developers know the above.  Remember, you just have to develop a good relationship with 1 to have a gateway to the rest.  Use small emails with enough details of what you’re offering.  Copy pasted, 1 page or longer emails from the HR of the job with your company’s template is exactly what you shouldn’t do.  For the record, you shouldn’t have to capitulate to a bad attitude.  Everyone who was good that I worked with had a good attitude.

Anything you can do to get more technical details about what the team is actually doing makes it way easier to sell the gig.  It also makes you extremely attractive for a Flex Developer to talk to you since you seem to know what you are talking about, and thus seem to feel that the potential hiree is right for the job vs. a blind “I found on you Google/LinkedIn/Your 6 year old Monster/Dice post with keywords in it and it’ll take 4 emails over 4 hours to figure out wtf the gig is”.

Finally, if you’re bold, get them to answer my 8 Flex Developer Interview Questions (skip #8 unless you know what you’re doing).

Good luck!

*** Update: Paul Taylor (@guyinthechair) has a more recent post on the same subject. ***

*** NOTE: I’m a n00b at Cocoa and Objective C. Unlike Python, I don’t like learning it, either. If you perceive something below is inaccurate, please comment, and I’ll update. ***

Preface

I was having a lot of fun using the iPhone packager. Then Apple changed their licensing to prevent people like me from using ActionScript for iPhone/iPad, and instead being forced to use their toolsets, or those unofficially approved. At first I was furious. Then I tried to get a simple list to scroll in AS3. Even using a fake mask, device fonts, and cacheAsBitmap for all items + container, it just wasn’t smooth, even with just 30 items, regardless of frame rate. If you use an out of the box UITableView in Cocoa, it “just works”.

I built my career on Flash Player because “it just works”. It doesn’t “just work” on the iPhone, and now it’s effectively illegal to use. That, and Adobe has apparently abandoned ship on the iPhone/iPad/iTouch portion, and instead are focusing on Android.

I was amazed at what I could do using Flash Lite 2 on my Nokia 6680 3 years ago. AS3 was all the rage, and yet I took the time to build a component framework in AS2 for use on devices because I felt it was “good enough” to build experiences for consumers. That market never materialized unless you targeted Japan (which I didn’t).

After finally getting my simple SWF to compile to the iPhone, I was estatic at how easy it was to design & code in what I knew, it just worked, and looked like I expected it to. Once I started moving things via TweenLite, though, it all went downhill. I don’t have these problems in Flex. If I use a List control in Flex, it just works; I don’t have to be an AS3 game developer to theorize on GPU acceleration possibilities to get the best list scrolling performance. I don’t have these problems, at least from what I’m initially seeing in my early learnings, with Cocoa.

So, I’m learning Objective C so I can execute the ideas I have for iPhone and iPad. Unlike PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Python & Django, this has been a pretty miserable experience. Python and Django are my choices for back-ends currently… but I don’t really have a “choice” for front ends on iPhone/iPad.

In an effort to reduce the pain for others as well as help myself retain this knowledge, I’m writing it down.

I understand it might seem strange since Android is a lot easier to develop for, and Flash Player 10.1 actually runs natively on the phone… and well, I might add. For me, there are 3 reasons. First, there is no market right now. Yes, I understand we help create it, but I own an iPhone and iPad. I love them, and so do others. I have a gateway to others right now via the app store, and want to empower them to use my apps. Secondly, if you’ve ever used an iPad, the additional screen real estate just fills you with ideas. Third, everyone wants an app right now. While the consumer data shows it’s hard to make money, it’s REALLY easy to make money for services; aka, a company hires you to build an app for them. This is especially true with the OS4 announcement of Enterprises having more control over deploying their own applications.

Another good primer for me, Objective C for the ActionScript Developer, is Keith Peter’s five tutorials. He doesn’t really cover the UIKit, just Objective C in general which is a great first start.

1. AS3 to iPhone Tutorial 1
2. AS3 to iPhone Tutorial 2
3. AS3 to iPhone Tutorial 3
4. AS3 to iPhone Tutorial 4
5. AS3 to iPhone Tutorial 5

Introduction: Nomenclature

There are a lot of new terms to learn. I just want my code to run on the iPhone, yet I have to learn a bunch of new terminology to ensure I understand what it entails, as well as their “meaning”. For example, MVC means something different to Objective C guys than it does to us. Yes, it’s subtle, but when they say it, it’s assumed you mean “their” version. It helps to know what the nomenclature of the Cocoa community is to learn, so first up, here’s some common terms.

Cocoa: The API you code in for the Mac. It’s like saying “Flex”; it’s all the things that fall under “Flex” like the compiler, the sdk, the ide, the runtime, etc. However, it’s a lot more than that. For example, there are Human Interface Guidelines that Apple puts out that Cocoa apps need to comply with (I don’t currently know how this is enforced, excluding iPhone/iPad). For the sake of this article, all you care about is “Foundation” and “UIKit”, 2 libraries that make up a lot of what people know of as Cocoa for iPhone. It’s also built on the MVC concepts we’re used to. The main difference is Cocoa is huge; it is a layer atop an OS, whereas Flex is a layer atop the Flash Player.

Objective C: C like programming language you code in that borrows some cool things from Smalltalk, similar to how we code in ActionScript. It’s from the 1980’s, and boy does it feel like it. Anytime I start coding, I have Megadeth on in the background, my Pontiac Firebird Trans Am in the driveway does a turbo boost, and Fletch watches over me, commenting how it’s all ball bearings these days.

Foundation: Provides all the low level stuff you need and shouldn’t have to write yourself. This includes data types like NSNumber (vs using int/float yourself), sockets, etc. Basically, if you can’t see it in a GUI, the class is here. Everything is prefixed with “NS” for NextStep, one of the companies responsible for the early development.

UIKit: All your GUI controls including support classes. Things like UIButton, UIAcceleration, etc. The UI prefix stands for User Interface (duh). You’ll hear about references to Application Kit; that’s the desktop version.

Core Data: Basically the model layer of your apps. This is actually kind of cool, and what we should have in Flex (I know of 2 people who have tried to create an open source one, and then shortly thereafter abandoned the project… too bad too). Right now, there are things like it in LiveCycle, I believe, but only Enterprises can afford that, so its’ not for “everyday use”. Basically, you create ValueObject’s, and they can be persisted in local XML or SQL databases automatically, vs. you having to manually write Factories, parsers, and versioning. Pimp.

Xcode: The IDE that you code Objective C in. You can build & debug your iPhone/iPad applications directly from here.

Interface Builder: The IDE that you use to visually build your GUI apps. You can actually create variable & method definitions here, wire them up visually, and then have it code gen the classes for you. It can also read your header files (imagine if every ActionScript class had an interface class associated with it that defined what it did). As a n00b, I’ve found it really easy to confuse this program and make it explode. Also, someone forgot to add tab order when they made it.

Objective C

Objective C is the programming language you write your applications in. It is effectively an extension to ANSI C with Object Oriented syntax. In Flash and Flex, you utilize ActionScript 3. Objective C has a lot in common with C and C++, and some of the lamesauce as well, namely pointers. Objective C also has multiple environs it can run on while ActionScript runs in just the Flash Player.

If you know ActionScript 3, you can read C, and thus Objective C. Like Java, the type definitions are on the left instead of right, but other than that, they are extremely similar. Like another article mentioned, if C didn’t have pointers, PHP and C would be nearly the exact same. Since Objective C has a lot in common with C, they too are similar.

If you’re coding Objective C for the iPhone/iPad, you don’t get Garbage Collection, and have to manually get rid of your variables/objects. Once you get used to the syntax, it’s almost the exact same as cleaning up your mess in ActionScript. In ActionScript, you set your Object references to null; in Objective C it’s called nil. More on that insanity later.

You can read more here about here.

Yes, you code in Objective C 2, not 1. 1 is even more lame than 2 (thankfully?).

Objective C Syntax: Methods

Objective C has a lot of the same things that ActionScript 3 has. They both use the same bracket syntax, and have the same cuddled vs. not wars. They both end lines with semi-colons. There isn’t as much dot syntax. They both have methods. Here’s how you invoke one in ActionScript:

mySound.setVolume();

Here’s how you invoke it in Objective C:

[mySound setVolume];

Notice in Objective C, they use brackets to indicate the containment of a method call. You can nest these as well, but they recommend you only go 2 deep since it becomes un-readable after that.

Here’s ActionScript storing a return value:

volume = mySound.getVolume();

Here’s Objective C doing the same:

volume = [mySound getVolume];

Passing in parameters is a little different and takes some getting used to. This, to me, is the same thing that threw me off in Ruby, and where Objective C totally ignores how C does it. Here’s ActionScript:

mySound.setVolume(value);

And here’s Objective C:

[mySound setVolume:value];

Ok, not so bad… except, the 1st parameter is always the only one WITHOUT a named parameter. Observe the following ActionScript 3 function with 2 parameters:

mySound.setLeftAndRightPan(left, right);

…and Objective C:

[mySound setLeftAndRightPan:left, rightValue:right]

Notice there is no “leftValue:left” here, just left. The first parameter is always nameless, yet every one after it has one. I guess they wanted more obvious parameters during function invocations… except forgot to build in one for the 1st parameter. *face palm*

For example, here’s an ActionScript 3 function definition:

private function setLeftAndRightPan(left:Number=0, right:Number=0):void

Here’s the equivalent Objective C:

- (void)setLeftAndRightPan:(NSNumber*)left, right:(NSNumber*)rightValue

Notice 4 important things. First, the return type is in the beginning and wrapped in paranethesis (void in this case). Second, notice that Objective C doesn’t allow for default values for function parameters like ActionScript. Third, notice the type definitions for the function parameters are in the left side vs. the right (in this case NSNumber). We’ll get to the asterisk later. Fourth, notice the dash in the very beginning. That signifies that this is an instance method on the class. If you want ActionScript’s static, use + instead.

Objective C Syntax: Variables

Variables are slightly different because Objective C has pointers as well of built-in helper methods to make memory management easier.

Here’s a variable in ActionScript, first defined using a String literal (pimp syntax) and the old school way:

private var name:String = "";
private var name:String = new String();

And here’s one in Objective C:

NSString* name = [NSString string];

There are a ton of caveats here. Notice we’re calling the string method on NSString; it’s basically a factory method to give us a string; similar to going new String(). When I did “” above, it’s called a String literal; the same as going {} vs. new Object(), or [] vs. new Array(). In ActionScript, each of those constructors has nice features, the effect is the same; you get a variable of that type back.

Notice the asterisk in the Objective C example. This means it’s a pointer to the String, not the actual String. Also notice since we’re calling the string method on the NSString class, it’s autoreleasing (similar to the Doom spell in Final Fantasy; it’ll die soon; ie he’ll get ejected from the Pool soon, more on that later). If you want the guy be like Number 1 and live forever instead of a Rico’s Roughneck, go:

NSString* name = [[NSString alloc] init]

Just keep in mind you have to manually call release on him later whereas the former, you don’t.

Objective C Syntax: Pointers & Memory Management

Variables are different because of a couple reasons. First, since Objective C is based on C, it has all the pointer baggage. We ActionScript Developers are spoiled because we don’t have do deal with this… or if we do, it requires little thought.

For example, in ActionScript, there are only 3 variable types that are by value, and thus don’t have pointers: Strings, Numbers, and Booleans. Yes, I’m including int and uint as Numbers here. Every other construct is an Object, and thus is passed by val. If you wish for an Object based variable to be removed from memory eventually, you need to ensure no more references exist, or in the case of circular references, that no one else knows about the circular relationship (the Mark and Sweeper from the Garbage Collector will get those mofos). For Numbers, Strings, and Booleans who aren’t local variables, you just remove their parent Object, and they’re toast. For local variables, they go away at the end of the function (usually… depends on how aggressive the Garbage Collector is at that moment in time).

For Objects, you just remove all references, usually by setting them to null, or in the case of dynamic Objects like Dictionary or Object hash maps, using the delete keyword.

Objective C’s iPhone runtime, and ActionScript’s Flash Player both operate using reference counting. This means, for Objects, an internal number is incremented for every person who “knows” about an Object. When that person later set’s his reference to null, that reference count goes down. When that reference count reaches 0, it’s eligible for Garbage Collection. The Flash Player also has a Mark and Sweep part to take care of circular references in the case where 2 Objects know about each other, yet no one knows in your app knows about them, and thus their reference count will never reach zero. If you’re running on the iPhone, you don’t have Garbage Collection, so need to call release yourself (which calls dealloc internally). In ActionScript, you’d either null the reference out, or call your own destroy method, THEN null reference out.

Objective C has this built in as a method called dealloc. You don’t call, it gets called for you when you (or someone else) calls release. In ActionScript, people will either use a convention of public function destroy, or those fu@#(* IDestroy marker interfaces that people NEVER implement fully (did I mention that’s annoying?).

In ActionScript, for a complex class, it may look something like this:

public function destroy():void
{
	if(timer)
	{
		timer.removeEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onTick);
		timer.stop();
		timer = null;
	}

	if(icon)
		icon.bitmapData.dispose();
}

In Objective C, this is built-in to NSObject, one of the main classes you often extend. The Objective C version of the above would look like:

-(void)dealloc
{
   [timer release]
   [icon release]
   [super dealloc]
}

As learn about how getter/setters are built into Objective C, you’ll see there is a better, and more common way to do the above (article I link to at the bottom describes this), but I need to get the point across here that you’re expected to clean up your own mess since Garbage Collection doesn’t exist, and everything can’t be an autorelease variable.

No Local Variables, Hence Autorelease & T3h Pool

In ActionScript, we have local variables. Basically, instead of storing it in memory, it’s stored in temporary memory that the stack is using (the stack of functions currently running). When one stack item is done (your function is done), those variables are removed. In ActionScript’s case, this isn’t immediate, but basically ensures that no one has references to those variables anymore. Later, Garbage Collection will come along and eat’ em.

Objective C doesn’t have local variables. Yes, I know, I’m face palming as well.

*deep breath* There IS a common way to deal with it. Your first thought may be to create a bunch of member variables; basically what game developers do for simple Object Pooling. That’s ghetto, though. You may think you could just create variables on the fly… the problem with that is you have to manually release them, and for return values, they’ll die before they get returned.

This is where autorelease comes in. Remember before when I talked about the 2 ways to create variables? Let’s revisit it, and show again how you kill things.

This creates a variable you must manually remove:

NSString* name = [[NSString alloc] init];
[name release];

… and she’s dead. However, here’s one that’ll be added to a pool, or rather “a Pool”:

NSString* name = [NSString string];

This is the same as doing:

NSString* name = [[NSString alloc] init];
[name autorelease];

You can then safely return these variables from functions, knowing that the caller will get it. It’s also considered good practice to do, specifically for encapsulation. There isn’t really a language construct to say “Hey dude, this guy is going to send you a variable it also has a pointer to, so please make sure you call his release first”. Crap like that is insane; it’s just easier to get either copy’s of variables so you don’t inherit their pointer baggage, or use autorelease so you don’t piss off people getting variables from you, and causing leaks if they forget to kill you first.

Yes, all of that above is a shortened version of what you have to do because there are no local variables. Yes, I’m face palming again.

If you’re curious about what this Pool is, imagine if a static class was created every time you ran some code.. and Garbage Collection ran immediately when you null’ed out your variables. The first thing it did was keep a reference to any variable that has autorelease on it. Then, 1 frame after the stack has been complete (all your code has run, and the next enter frame runs), it kills all the variables it has stored. That’s the AS version of what an Objective C Pool is.

Conclusions

This sucks. I blame Adobe AND Macromedia for my suffering.

BTW, if you’re looking for some pimp tutorials to learn this stuff, my compadre Brian linked me to it, called “Cocoa Dev Central“, specifically this article.

I attended and spoke at the 360 Flex conference in San Jose this year. Before the high fades away, I wanted to post what I learned last week for a few reasons. First, to share with others. Second, to share for those who didn’t attend, but might if they feel they’d gain something from it. Third, a growing number of Flex devs, albeit really small, feel they don’t gain much from conferences. I wanted to show a potential counterpoint to this in hopes it’ll convert them back.

360 Flex was in San Jose, California this year, so it’s a long hike. That said, people from all over the USA and world converged to meet & greet. 360 Flex is THE premiere Flex conference. As a speaker, it’s always been the place, next to Boston, where I KNOW people in the audience will get what I’m talking about. As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve struggled to present topics that weren’t too advanced for the general Flex community, yet would interest those who are advanced as well. Her majesty constantly reminds me that the things I’ve spoke about 2 years are still very relevant to Flex & Flash devs today, and I should find some way to get passionate enough about those topics so I can speak on them. Regardless, I don’t have that problem in San Jose and Boston, so it was a nice reprieve.

This attitude is based on my perceptions of the body language of the audience as well as twitter & in person responses afterwards (or lack thereof). It’s not 100% accurate, but I can usually read an audience, knowing if they are getting it, and recognizing what things in my talks need to change material wise. I also find that I speak better when I’m jet lagged and/or hung over. This mellows my normal spazz-tastic nature, and helps me find a really good pace, especially if her majesty reminds me to have fun before hand. Timing these sorts of things is hard, hehe.

I’m usually just so excited to speak about something I love that I forget the basic tenets of giving speeches, and that is “effective pausing”, pace, and stopping to re-assess the audience’ engagement. That’s one of the reasons I continue to speak. I feel like I rock at Flex, but still have a long way to go at speaking. Regardless, what “job” allows you to spread knowledge, gives you the opportunity to have dialogues with geniuses, and act like a crackhead in front of an audience causing them to lolcano?

I may not come away from conferences & user groups with gallons of insight like I did in the past, but I’ve found other angles of knowledge, and EVERYTHING is right with making new friends, and re-connecting in person with existing ones. I love this shit.

Goal: Flex 4 and Catalyst Workflows, & Meeting Different, New People

My goals for Flex/Flash specific conferences nowadays are to hit the sessions that are gaping holes in my knowledge.  I’m probably the last Flex dev on the planet who doesn’t use Flex 4.  This is a combination of my consulting work on existing Flex 3 projects, tight deadlines, and the need for dependability.  Thus, anything Flex 4 specific I’m interested in, not really from the technical side (Adobe’s got great docs), but more from piercing the marketing bs.  Asking top tier to regular devs “how do you REALLY work with the tools?” and striking up a dialogue.

Another passion of mine is people.  I love people.  I love working at Starbucks, and even more so, Manhattan, because I’m surrounded by people. By energy.  By life.  It’s an exciting feeling, and helps motivate to create cool shiz.  I’m fascinated by what makes people tick.  I like to see how some people have certain causes that lead them to certain effects.  If you challenge some commonly held beliefs, you can really get a good dialogue going with developers.  If you make vaporous statements about commonly held agreements, you’ll nodding confirmations, but not much more.  From groups to individuals, you can cause a lot of interesting things to happen. IF you know what buttons to push.

I’m not just fascinated by crowds and groups, but by individuals.  If you’ve ever been to a Microsoft conference, one thing that differentiates the Flash/Flex world from them is our diversity.  We don’t have every application angle handled by Adobe, thus we must reach out to others for help in certain areas.  While we do technically have a client side and middle tier, we don’t have a database solution.  We must use MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.  This requires us to integrate with other communities.  In turn, they are exposed to us.  We’re different, from different backgrounds.  Some of the culture these clashes are bad, most are good.

Because our tech works with a common goal, we have a “managed diversity”.   Studies have proven that companies who have diversity that’s managed are more successful than those who don’t have diversity.  In turn, those who are so diverse, but aren’t managed are worse.  Flash hitting Rails, Flex hitting Django, AIR conjoining with C++.  Design agency punks mingling with executive, khaki wearing Enterprise Java J2EE devs.  It’s wonderful, crazy.

In short, the opportunity at these conferences, both large and small, to meet someone totally not like me is high.  Yes, we have a common thread; we love t3h SWF.  Yet we all have different backgrounds, different goals, desires… and once you dig into someone’s background, and get them talkin, I eat that shit up.  I love hearing about where people come from, how they arrived where they are, and why they decided to come this way, if at all.

It’s said that the best things about tech conferences are the discussions between/after sessions. For me, it IS the conference.  I’ve always tried to surround myself with people that are better than me.  They rise you up.  Debating with computer scientists, and genius artists… how can you NOT walk away a better person?

What Did I Learn?

A ton.

1. A lot of developers don’t mind the lack of career path.  You rise to architect/consultant level, and instead of hitting the glass ceiling and breaking into management, many just saturate Flex/Flash avenues as far as they can, or go learn another technology and do the whole thing over… only a lot quicker than it took them the first time.
2. A lot of developers read technical manuals & programming books vs. marketing & sales ones.  There are exceptions, but most drink from the tech knowledge fountain and can’t get enough.  I feel like I have a responsibility to help fill the gaps to help them so they either (A) don’t have to worry about this gap or (B) have a desire to get out of their comfort zone.
3. Adobe doesn’t like me much anymore.  There are some great people there whom I still interact with, but it’s been pretty clear over the past 3 years that as I’ve moved into a more architect/sales role with my professional consulting, I’ve had zero time to evangelize software I don’t even fully believe in.  You can get away with not filing bugs for Adobe as long as you evangelize and help the community, but even that value perception has fallen out of favor apparently.  Given the fact that I’m focused on higher level problems like software workflows, marketing, sales, and products, this is time NOT spent talking about how dope Flex 4 states are, or how wonderful Flash Builder 4 handles certain coding challenges.  I’m not alone in this career transition, it just sucks that I can’t really devote the time I need to get respected again.  Additionally, Adobe’s focus, at least in the Flash Player sphere, has been exposing boilerplate API’s and functionality to allow them + 3rd parties to build powerful extensions on top fo the Flash Player.  I totally agree with the approach, but I’m not technically saavy enough to really help them in this area.  I know what my clients need and want, but translating that to a use case “please expose sound data via sound sample data so I can build Hobnox” is just not a jump I can technically make. To be fair, only 10% of it is CS3/CS4 related.  I screamed and bitched at Macromedia and Adobe for years, and saw the fruits of my suggestions along with the communities become a reality.  While some of their software is old, and it’s challenging for them to add pimp, new revenue generating features without alienating old markets or breaking old workflows, they still have people with mad skillz working for them, with a long successful track record (except for Flash CS3 and CS4; even though Fireworks CS3/4 crashes, we ALL love that prog).  I’m still in good with the Flash Media team, though, and that’s been helpful since I’ve been 100% focused on video for the past 3 years.  They are a pretty thick skinned bunch, so maybe that’s why… Anyway, given the amount of responsibility I have with running my own consulting firm + having 2 kids, I just don’t see how I can return to the days of old where I’d take 4 hours one night, create some kick ass shit, blog it, and thank Macromedia/Adobe for the cool toys…. and then suggest new things.  Maybe someday.
4. The latest fad with our industry is Dependency Injection, and Yakov Fain won’t tell me what the next fad will be… if you figure that out, you’ll be the shiz.  Historically this has been what another programming community has had for years, and the Flash/Flex devs just suddenly get and freak out.  While cool, it was apparently obvious to others.
5. If a mentoring program existed for the Flex community whose sole goal was to make 1 product/project complete and “live” from 1 of the 30 “side projects” each Flash/Flex dev has on their computer, the world would be an AMAZINGLY better place.  All these 20% to 80% done apps/libraries/products that these developers have, some are really damn cool and NEED TO BE RELEASED.  Those like me who know this have a moral responsibility to help/empower these individuals to “do the last 10%”.  I don’t know how to do that, but it needs to be done somehow.
6. People who create kick ass open source projects don’t get enough feedback.  The only solution I can think of is people need more evangelists to not only promote their projects if they aren’t capable of being evangelists themselves, but also utilizing those envangelists to forcibly extract/publicly recognize via Twitter & Blog streams successful projects that have utilized their software.  Meaning, like Joel Hooks will re-tweet Robotlegs endeavors done by the community to help give it a wider recognition.  Additionally, he’ll interact with those who’ve done projects, and take “back to the Robotlegs community” the problems/concerns/commendations those who use the software.  Steven Sacks getting public, community member quotes on the Gaia site is another example.  Projects like PyAMF and Hamcrest need this role, and I’m not really sure how to help them recruit for it beyond citing simple tasks they can do to help themselves.
7. Dan Florio was right in ignoring my advice.  I told him not to do RunPee.com.  I didn’t think it’d be profitable.  I was wrong.
8. A lot of people in our industry are happy to make bling working on consistent Flex work with a consulting firm.  I am not like this.
9. There’s a growing desire for many developers to learn & teach UX concepts.  This is a direct result from the lack of qualified UX talent.  Since this discipline most affects our client’s bottom line as well as project costs & risk… we don’t have time to wait for UX people to just magically popup out of colleges.
10. I’ve gone 10 years without having a contract of my own, and signing any contract a client/company/consulting firm throws at me.  As long as the correct rate/price is on there, I didn’t care what the rest said.  After seeing Ellie Khabazian’s presentation, while I won’t create a contract of my own (since the clients work with would never sign it) I will most definitely ALWAYS be reading contracts I sign, and adjusting wording as necessary.  I’m one lucky mofo.
11. There seems to be more animosity towards Silverlight, and more fear towards HTML5.  Those in the know don’t care about HTML5, and don’t seem to fear Silverlight.
12. A lot of the old Flash devs don’t seem to see a lot of rapid innovation in produced content, whereas the new devs seem to have that feeling of daily finding wonder that the old ones had back in 2002.
13. Twitter makes blogging hard.  We all already knew this, I just got more corroboration.
14. Writing large scale examples for frameworks is a constant problem in “finding the time”.
15. I have a lot to learn about sales.
16. Getting developers on camera is freaking hard.  For a podcast?  Simple.
17. Getting Kevin Suttle to break character is freaking hard.

Hope to see y’all another conference soon!  Thanks John & Tom.

I talk developing for Apple’s new iPad, how you can use your existing video to play on it. Also the Gaia Flash Framework’s history with a quick summary of what she does.

Mentioned links:

• Apple iPad
• Alternative Videos for iPhone/iPad
• Building iPad apps with Flash CS5
• Gaia Flash Framework
• Ruby on Rails
• Unload Flex Modules

Beers

• Shiner Bock
• Lagunitas Brown Shugga
• Bridgeport Hop Czar
• New Belgium Fat Tire