What will this be about?
Frequently when people find out what I teach, a how-to question or an email with buggy code attached isn’t far behind. Lately there’s been an interesting change in those questions and emails. Rather than asking me to find the bugs in their code or how to code something, people want me to tell them where they went wrong now that they are “stuck” in a half-finished project. Others tell me about ideas for RIAs that they don’t know how or where to start building. Some are generally overwhelmed by the idea of building an entire application.
I’m familiar with these issues. I’ve struggled with them. I watch students struggle with them almost every semester. I’ve worked through these issues and have helped students work through them too. This experience has taught me that most of the time these issues are related to application design and development – actually, the lack thereof. Without having a solid understanding of what needs to be done and a plan for how to achieve it, successfully completing projects on time and on budget is much more difficult.
There are a number of good resources on the various topics of application design and development. However, most of those resources use Java, or Rails, or a C based language in the examples. Many people building an RIA with Flex/ActionScript don’t consider using those resources due to the language difference.
Please correct me if I’m wrong – I don’t know of any ActionScript or Flex resources dedicated to application design and development. Joey Lott and Danny Patterson’s Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns does includes a chapter on designing applications. Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0 by Elst, Jacobs, and Yard includes chapters on planning and project workflow. On his blog, Ted Patrick has some good posts related to problem solving, application design, and development workflows. Each of these resources are extremely valuable, but none provide an in-depth, soup to nuts discussion of application design and development.
So that’s what I’m going to try to do here. I’m about to start building a new RIA and will document the entire process in a way that will hopefully be helpful to some. Starting with the idea and ending with deployment, I’m going to show how I work through the entire design and development process. Please ask questions, make suggestions, and share your own experiences.
August 6th, 2009 - 12:57
Cool, adding you to my RSS. I think a resource like this will be tremendously useful for anyone starting out. It really seems like the learning curve for this sort of things looks something like this:
1. This is an Object, you can create methods and properties.
2. This is how you can extend an Object.
3. [frantic scrambling of novice developer to articulate exactly what they don't understand]
4. Good, now that you’re confused meet my friend Cairngorm.
It’s not impossible, there’s just no gradual way into app design and development in a Flash/Flex/Air environment. So, cheers!
August 6th, 2009 - 13:08
It’s out of date now (it’s from Flex 1.5 days) and fairly Flex-specific, but “Developing Rich Clients With Macromedia Flex” has some great advice with respect to architecting a Flex app (as opposed to just “solving Flex problems”). http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Rich-Clients-Macromedia-Flex/dp/0321255666
August 7th, 2009 - 11:23
Yup, that step 3 is a doozy. That’s where this blog is going focus.
I’ve never really thought about it in this way before, but I think you’re right – there is no gradual way into app design and development in Flash/Flex/Air. I have an idea as to why, but need to think about it a little more. What are your thoughts on it?
August 7th, 2009 - 11:25
Thanks for the suggestion. I’m going to have to take a look at it.
August 13th, 2009 - 12:43
I suspect that a great many people who come into AS3 development from something like Java or C# already have the app design skillset that comes with being a Real Programmer. The other half of AS3 coders, though, come from the world of web design – photoshop and HTML and CSS. For this group it’s a triumph when the concept of OOP clicks, let alone the details of any given implementation.
So the issue I see is that there are plenty of techniques out there for advanced programmers to use to do complex stuff with AS3 – and there are plenty of techniques for noob programmers to do cool stuff with AS3. But there’s a disconnect – I haven’t seen much that says “OK, so you are coming from Timelines and Design and you can finally tell the difference between a Class and an Instance. So the next thing you need to know is…”
I mean, it’s possible to make that transition – I’ve been in the process of it for years. It’s just a very steep learning curve for people coming to AS3 development from HTML/CSS, and application design isn’t even a concept many of these people know they need to learn.