I’m a graphic designer who was expected to learn Flash by her boss at work years ago.

I have never taken computer programming or scripting language courses and find it all very confusing and intimidating.

I had no desire to learn Flash. I was quite happy making static images in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

When my experience with Flash began at my job, I think I started out in version 3 or 4.

Every time a new version of Flash was introduced, my head boss would buy everyone at work a copy of it.

By the time Flash MX was released, one of my bosses was expecting me to produce more and more complex animations and incorporate more interactivity in my Flash projects, ones that could be controlled by the user – and some of these could only be pulled off by more Action Script, as far as I could tell.

I had to quit that job around 2002 because I had to help take care of my mother over the next 6 or 7 years (she got cancer and eventually died).

During this time, I bought many books on Action Script, and I had a full version of Flash MX at home to practice with.

I’m still stuck with Flash MX because I cannot afford to purchase new software, which means I have to use whatever version of Action Script Flash MX uses (which is what, version 1 or 2?)

To this day, I’ve not made much progress with Action Script. No matter how hard I try to learn it, I never get too far.

Once I get to a part of an Action Script book that confuses me, I tend to get an anxiety attack, I get frustrated, put it down and never look at it again.

Here I am trying to make sense of Action Script 1 (or 2, or whatever MX uses) and I have people saying I’m a washed-up, obsolete, no-good hack if I don’t or can’t learn version 3.0. That’s not very encouraging.

Remember, I’m a graphic artist with zero background at computer programming; this stuff does not come easily for people such as me.

When I first started out, I found the “gotoAndPlay,” concept of nested movie clips, targeting movie clips, etc., type stuff foreign and hard enough to learn, and now I hear people tossing around strange, exotic- sounding terms such as “framing” and “classes” and what all – and I never got the hang of AS 1 and/or 2.

Unfortunately, I do see an expectation by some people, no matter how unrealistic it may be, that graphic artists should know Action Script, and that beyond the simple “gotoAndPlay” material.

I wonder if the companies running these “Graphic Designer Wanted” job ads I’ve seen over the years understand what a graphic designer is and does:

I’ve actually seen ‘Graphic Designer Wanted’ ads asking that the applicant know “C++, Visual Basic, SQL, and oh yeah, knowledge of photoshop would be nice, too.”

I am just hoping that when I make a foray into the working world again that there will be employers who will be happy with the skill set I already possess and not expect me to know advanced Action Script.

At least on my last job, they would sometimes pair me and the other graphic designer up with a computer programmer; we would do the front-end stuff (the art work), and he would handle the scripting and so forth.

I hope that is still the working model at some places today.

Anyway, just remember that not everyone wanted to learn Flash or Action Script: it was foisted upon us.

Unfortunately, there is nothing much that can be done to enhance AS2 in a similar fashion to AS3.

I think it would be nice to update aspects of it to include some of the functionality of AS3 (e.g. addChild vs getNextHighestDepth but without forcing an addChild – any object created in AS2 should be automatically added to the top layer).

I find myself constantly jumping back to AS2 for smaller projects. But I have found with large complex projects (one’s that would require large chunky sections of code anyway) AS3 is far superior… well, at least if the flash player wasn’t so horribly buggy. I’ve had more issues with player bugs in AS3 than I ever did in AS2

Complaining about having to learn a single product as it evolves over a decade? Try doing what I had to do, learn 16 different programming languages to put food on the table and keep a consulting business running. That is the essential difference apparently between Flash “designers” (I seriously doubt tha majority of Flash users out there are trained designers, I would prefer you accept the term hobbyists or fledgling scripters at the very least) and professional programmers.

I have no Flash background. In fact, I don’t have a computer science degree either. I taught myself all 16 computer languages, the first few while I was sorking BS jobs right out of the army. Now I have looked at Flash over the past couple of years and liked what you could produce with it, but I didn’t like HOW you produced those cute little animations with the product. Also, my core client list aren’t just scooping buckets of money at people for banner ads. Maybe 6-8 years ago, not today. Today, the web is growing up, not just Flash, but the web, and growing up means consuming data. It means not just pretty little photo galleries and slideshows, but rich media accessing valuable data and connecting the dots between advanced user interfaces with advanced back-end access to the client’s real assets: their data.

I am playing the worlds smallest violin right now for those who say they are strugglng to learn AS3. I am only willing to accept Flash as a real viable tool now that AS3 exists. Now the game is getting interesting. But do you really think, any of you, that all “hard-core” (let’s use the word professional, shall we?) programmers were born with our minds loaded with advanced OOP principals embedded in a chip in our heads? We were preloaded with language grammers in the womb? Sorry to break your bubble, but all of us had to work at it. Work seems like a dirty word when you can make a piece of text fly across the stage with a few mouse-clicks. But work it is, so get used to our world. Don’t paint yourselves as underdogs. Programmers generally do not have great social lives because we have to struggle with ever evolving technological changes year in and year out, learning the latest versions of a lot of new technologies at once, and practicing those technologies, and while we are at it, delivering useable products to our clients, not leaning on a foosball table all day. It is hard work, it pays very well and it is a fact of life for us. My heart doesn’t bleed because VB6 programmers haven’t taken the last 6-7 years learn a new version of their single bread and butter tool, nor does it bleed for those of you who want Flash to remain a toy language (which is what VB was originally considered). I am excited that finally Adobe is finally inviting us developers to the party. Frankly, I think they, and you, will benefit because with programmers, serious programmers, there is a huge work ethic you can depend on to use any technology to the max, to tell you what it wrong with it and often actually help you make it better, and to make the technology actually push the envelope (and for the record I don’t think making a carousel is pushing the envelope). If you don’t like that statement, tough. I don’t liking working 17 hour days, but I do it. The rewards are well worth it.

Look on the bright side, if you don’t want to become really advanced with the product as it evolves, do what the original VB programmers did. Let workhorse programmers step onto the field and write a lot of prebuilt kick-ass new add-ons that you can just pick up, include in your projects and make yourselves look like wizards all over again. To be fair, it isn’t just Flash people who whine like this, there are many less-than-motivated developers in every language/product who don’t like to scale the learning curve that some of us are forced to do to remain viable. Its only because you haven’t walked in our shoes that you want to call us elitists, or suggest that we have superior attitudes.

The fact is, programming is hard for everyone when you first encounter something new. Even hitters with nearly two decades of experience struggle, as I and many others I know can attest.

So because Adobe is allowing its products to grow up, and to provide a reason for we grunt programmers to finally give Flash a serious look is only fair, and only good for the larger community. Nobody cares how hard it is for you to jump from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3. Clients will just call you a whiner and give your check to someone else. No one cares how hard it is for me to spend my nights and weekends to learn C#, Javascript and 3 different JS frameworks, the .NET runtime, keep up with evolving CSS, XHTML, ASP.NET and now ActionScript 3. Suck it up. Most of you only have one language to re-learn.

In the future, if you can’t get your hands around the lingua franca of OOP in at least one language, then you will be delivering pizzas. But somebody has to deliver pizzas. It is what it is. OOP, RIA, rich media apps connecting to corporate data, musclar appications are now and will continue to be cash cows. Either you want in or you want out. If you want in, crack a book. Watch a few a video tutorials. Write some code. Give it your best shot. If you were smart enough to make a lame-ass scripting language like [insert all pre-AS3 versions here] ActionScript produce impressive works of animated art, then you are smart enough to learn OOP. It isn’t all that hard folks. It is just different than what you are used to. Stop complaining, and start studying. Because I can tell you this from watching this sort of thing play out time and again, you are not going to stop technology from advancing just because you are lazy. Ever hear of Clipper? dBase? TurboPascal? PAL? I didn’t think so. They don’t really exist in any meaningful form anymore. And people who clung to those languages like grim death rather than embrace change found themselves left behind and playing the victim, and consequently out of the game now.

Seriously, how can you enjoy technology without embracing change? That is the name of the game. Don’t think you are going to sit on your precious code base for the next 10 years and the money is just going to flow to you. I have written my own propriety frameworks, and bodies of code over and over again, on average every 3-4 years as long as I have been programming. You do it to save time, and milk it for as long as it is worth, but you don’t do it expecting to ride them forever and that the ravages of time will pass you by. You have to be nimble, flexible and work as hard as the rest of us if you want to have your slice of of the pie.

There is no difference between hard-core programmers and hard-core designers, by the way. If you are hard-core anything, it means you have an “A” game. Having an A game, simply means you work to push your skills, to keep the blades sharp.

Suck it up and get busy. Best of luck. Like us or not, we are on the field with you now.

In my opinion, there are a lot of things that actionscript/flash cannot do out of the box like easy form serialization, application/website scaffolding, more than basic string manipulation, etc.

I am looking for a library/framework that provides a base of code that takes all the plumbing off my hands, Can any of you guys point me in the right direction?

Any reply is appreciated

email[dot]rafa[at]gmail[dot]com

Absolutely agree, extremely well put. “Java dudes – Back off”

It takes a lot of guts to do what you did.

Well done Mate!

http://blog.projectx4.com/2008/01/29/dear-adobe/