Clement Wong of http://stopcoding.wordpress.com was a speaker at yesterday’s Flex Camp Toronto. If you have been working with the Flash or Flex IDE’s for any significant time, you would walk away from his talk with a deeper appreciation for the tools that we use everyday. Clement’s intentions were never to show the small audience to become experts in compilers. He just wanted to show us the door to the Java-based Compiler API which to the average Flex Developer is overlooked. It was a very valuable and highly technical insight. Arguably, the best presentation of the day aimed at a 200-300 level audience.
Even more importantly, he’s promoting the latest addition to the Flex ecosystem called the HellFire Compiler Daemon. The compiler that is bundled with Flash/Flex builder does not scale beyond a single core. HFDC uses out of order processing to delegate compilation tasks to unused cores and memory. For all you >1 min compile time sufferers whose software is destined for legacy at some point in the SDLC, check it out at http://bytecode-workshop.com.
I started following Flex from an end-user developer perspective starting at Flex 2 Beta 2. Clement shared Allaire/Macromedia anecdotes about how the Flash Authoring tool’s compiler was rebuilt in Java and made faster than it’s predecessor. As a long time Flash Developer, I found it extremely interesting what was going on behind the scenes at the times before the Macromedia/Adobe marketing machines started spinning it’s message to developers like us. Even if compiler design is not your thing, learning about the history behind the compiler that we invoke everyday was entertaining. It was a rare opportunity to interact with a speaker who has been a part of the team that makes the tools we use everyday.
Having attended a number of Flash/Flex conferences in the past, Clement’s ranks as one of the better ones based on a criteria I just realized just now:
- A good presentation has familiar parts: There are concepts and ideas that I knew about a long time ago and they are being re-enforced now. If there is an excess of this part, the presentation is mostly a waste of time.
- A good presentation has unfamiliar parts: There are concepts and ideas that I had no clue about and now I am aware of them. I am far from mastery but at least I have access to resources to learn more about it. If there is an excess of this part, the presentation is mostly a waste of time as maybe the studying the resources is beyond my interest.
- A presentation has a return on investment of time spent: Acquisition of new skill sets or tools that will help me everyday. This is more important the first two. Having attended this presentation, HFCD may shave compile times, help me discover bugs earlier, and deploy software faster.
If you have a chance to see him speak, I highly recommend.
Joeflash
on Jun 12th, 2010
@ 8:17 pm:
That shit was hard core. Loved his talk. Surprised that I actually understood most of what he said, even though don’t ask me to repeat it, ha ha. He took us through the precise steps and even the java code the Flex compiler(s) use to interpret markup code, embed assets, establish code dependencies and crunch it all down into bytecode. The talk was worth its weight in gold just to hear that, never mind the history lesson we got on the (unwritten) evolution of Flex as a technology. His talk could have used a few more diagrams to increase comprehension (because I’m a 30:40:30 visual:auditory:kinaesthetic learner), but it was pretty awesome.
Not too happy when the organizers cut 45 minutes off of his 2.5 hour talk because the other sessions were all done. I understand why they did it, they didn’t want everyone to leave before the closing session, but I’m more irritated at the other two speakers for not having planned their talks better (what, you couldn’t have showed them 45 minutes of cool Android app stuff Lee?) Anyways, Flex Camp Toronto was great, and this talk was certainly the highlight. Wish they’d recorded it.
Definitely gonna try out HFCD. Now all I have to do is save up for an Octal-core Puter…