knowledge.lapasa.net

I love hearing about stories about code that embraces change rather than fight it. Steve Rowe shares his experience with Test Driven Development.

At first it felt painful. You can’t code as fast. It sucks having to stop and write tests. Then I started making changes to the design. This is when it pays to have unit tests.

One of my partners in this project has written some code that I will end up helping out with. He has no tests for his area. It’s a lot scarier going in there to make changes.

Link is here.

From FlashInTO,

Venue: Resistor Gallery, 284e College St. (just west of Spadina), Toronto
Date: Wed July 25th
Time: 7:00 - 10:30
Cost: FREE!!!

Presentations

8:00 TBA

8:30 TBA

9:00 Colin Moock talks about his ‘Essential ActionScript 3.0′ book thats finally out! Copies will be available for purchase and signing.

Link is here

You have to be a geek to get an O’Reilly book signed by it’s author…

…where does the line start?

In total, I’ve gone to two conferences and this was the better of the two considering that I am more a coder than a designer. For $250USD, not only did I walk away with new Flex techniques to exercise, we all got catered and went home with some nice goodies.

The following is my retail guestimates of the stuff that I received as well as a guess of the dollar value that I ate.

Yay to free stuff!

$5 - Catered Monday Breakfast consisting of danishes, bagels, and muffins. All fresh and all dee-lish. I believe it was catered by St. Germain catering. It was a surprise and a great way to start the day!

$10 - Binder of some (not all) of the presentations’ slides so that we could annotate them or preview the ones that weren’t booked. Very pretty, very handy, and very valuable for post conference recapping.

$3 - Staples 8.5 x 11in notepad cause serious learners take notes

$1 - Fig Leaf branded Sharpie marker

50c - Fig Leaf branded Pen

$1 - Fig Leaf training and services propaganda

$10 - Fig Leaf water bottle with mountain climber style clip. Very cool!

$45 - O’Reilly Programming Flex 2 which is a book not necessarily on it’s way out in the advent of Flex 3 Beta.

25c - Trial copy of Flex to pass to a friend/coworker cause Flexmaniacs attendees already use Flex.

$8 - Catered Monday Lunch - I coined this as an “American Bento Box” which is a choice of sandwiches packed with fresh fruit, chips and a sweet cookie.

Under that sandwich was a freshly baked cookie and utensils, right on.

$6 - Catered Tuesday Breakfast - Same spread as before, same baked freshness!

$8 - Catered Tuesday Lunch - More American Bento Boxes. No complaints for freshness.

BONUS! $15 - Eye Street Software branded 1GB USB Key from attending Jim Robson

Estimated Total Free Stuff = $112.75!

Conference organizers knew how to start the day right and how to keep the energy going.

Some of the presentations had some Flex ’smartie pants’ in the crowd that liked getting airtime. I hope some day that those guys get confident enough to launch their own presentations. I’m all for more presenters, more topics and more tracks.

Please keep in mind that everything mentioned so far is secondary to the objective of learning more Flex stuff. I didn’t travel from Toronto, Canada just to collect very nice swag. I hope in my next post to share my thoughts in the presentations and how I found it useful for what I do.

Big it up to the organizers and presenters for providing a great east-coast Flex conference!

Center piece of the Courtyard where we ate lunch

This is a good read that I would forward to anyone who wanted to know why AJAX can not do everything. Having built Flex/Flash content that will run in the Flash Player, I already knew much of these arguments but the article does a really good job of organizing the strengths, weaknesses, and commonalities between the two approaches of delivering information on the client side.

“…in real-wold use, Flex typically requires less coding to build the same or better functionality. The learning curve is higher, but the development times are significantly lower. “

Read the article here at Anthony Franco’s Blog.

Rather than inserting trace() statements all over your code, forgetting where you put them, and then let another developer decrypt them or worse, obfuscate another developer from trying to understand the output, you ought to train yourself to use the Eclipse-style debugger.

It’s simple enough that you set up your breakpoints and then run the main file under the Debugger perspective. At runtime, the program will halt at the breakpoint and yield you a model of all the objects in memory at that time in the Variables tab of the Debugger perspective. The Debugger UI gives you a great amount of control of how deep you want to drill into the object model at the time the program is frozen. Press the “Play” button to resume control flow which will continue until the next breakpoint.

Once you’re done analyzing your problem, you can hit the “Clear All Breakpoints” to clear all the points of debugging interests in your application. It’s a quick and dirty approach without investing into logging.

* * *

In related news, Mike Morearty is delivering a presentation on the Flex Builder Debugger at 360 Flex @ Seattle …

About me (Mike Morearty)

I’m a Senior Computer Scientist at Adobe. Since I’m a scientist, I always wear a white lab coat. I currently work on Flex Builder, the IDE for Flex. I work primarily on the debugger portion of the product. I have a fondness for debuggers. Before Adobe, I spent ten years at Microsoft, where (among other things) I worked on Visual Studio’s debugger for a number of years.

This graph is from an old article but increasingly relevant topic when considering what backend technologies to choose when developing a web app. From what bits and pieces I know here and there, it seems to be in line with my impressions of them and what my peers (from each platform) tell me about it.

It’s a pretty graph. How accurate does this model the real world? Who knows….

In addition to Java, Flex 3 is allegedly supposed to better cater to these other crowds. Let’s hope and see!

The original article is here.

Have you ever received an email about a great job oppurtunity? I got this email this morning:

Hi Mark,

I work for an IT recruitment and consulting firm located in Toronto. We’re currently looking for someone to fill the above role with a terrific company in the Oakville area. I just came across your resume and believe you might make a good fit. Please peruse the attached job description, see if it looks like something you might be interested in and get back to me with the latest copy of your resume. Should you be currently engaged, please feel free to forward this to anyone you know who would be willing and able to perform the role.

Regards,

{headhunter’s name ommited}
Staffing Consultant
{company omitted}

My first reaction after reading the job description is “f-ing idiots!!!”. You guys are recruiting ME to work for the company that I already work for! Being the big joke this was, I contemplated should I respond and say I was interested and here’s my resume minus my current employment listing. Then I’d get an interview with H.R. and if I got an offer then I would have to quit my current job to accept the new one in the same company, same department. So yeah, it would be a waste of time on all involved parties.

My second reaction is like how did this happen in the first place? Oh, poor guy, I havn’t updated my resume since I started working here.

Anyways, are you interested in ActionScripting in product development environment? Learn about the role here.

If you’re an MXNA blogger in the G.T.A., I would be greatful if you shared this information on your blog. Thanks!

Position Summary
The Flash Developer will be responsible for integrating unique solutions within our Flash Gaming Suites. The position strongly emphasizes ActionScript programming, from core libraries to interface development. The position will be part of a team of 2-5 flash developers and 2-3 graphic designers of varying experience.

Key Responsibilities
- Assist in the creation and maintenance of Parlay’s suite of Flash games
- Integrate solutions within Parlay’s Gaming Suites
- Flash skill requirement is largely ActionScript and interfacing with Java and Web components

Required Skills and Competencies
- Competency in the use of all Flash IDE’s from Flash MX 2004 onward
- Extensive Flash ActionScript experience with AS1 and AS2 with a workable understanding of AS3.
- Familiarity with OO concepts, design patterns and is comfortable with implementing them for Flash applications
- Familiarity with HTML
- Must be flexible and able to work with AS1, AS2, and AS3 scripts
- Formal training in programming is a requirement
- 2-3 years related experience
- Strong written and oral communication skills

Definite Assets
- Proficiency in Photoshop, Illustrator, Sound and Video Editing Software
- Understanding of Java, XML, HTML, and other web technologies
- Gaming experience
- A College Diploma or University Degree in a technology field

So if you are interested or you know someone who might be, please send me your resume/CSV at mlapasa at parlaygroup dot com. The role is focused on client-side application development and not website design. For more information about the company, please visit http://www.parlaygroup.com.

Mark Lapasa
Flash Developer
Parlay Entertainment
Where the World Plays Bingo.
mlapasa at parlaygroup dot com
www.parlaygroup.com
2305 Wyecroft Road, Second Floor,
Oakville, ON, Canada L6L 6R2

First-time Flash In TO poster “djshagz” shares experiences into using Microsoft Expression Blend and XAML.

“Well, I’ve been working with Blend for a few weeks now, working on a POC using WPF technologies for a client, as part of an exercise to learn XAML and Blend, figure out what the workflow it suppose to be and how it might fit within our company, etc.

I have to say, it was a really frustrating experience, but I have to qualify that by saying I had never done any C# sharp programming before…”

The post seems honnest and sincere. I have yet to take a stab at it myself. You can find the post here.

Today, I asked a co-worker whether or not it was possible to debug javascript in real-time inside the browser. I didn’t want to embed cumbersome temporary Alert()’s into the source which was already in production.

Specifically, I wanted to see how the .swf was reaching outside of the Flash Player and invoking a javascript function in the HTML source.

He led me to FireBug. I must say, this is probably one of the most impressive plugins for debugging javascript. With little guidance, I was able to setup a watch on the js function and was able to log the arguments passed to it into the console with no typing required. Point and click! I’ve never been this excited about javascript.

If you already knew about Firebug, I’m just sharing the love.