I found your page because I googled for ["Warren McCulloch" quote]… This is a really nice blog, congrats! As a software developer for several scripting languages I could not resist to read this article and posting my comment:

“I wouldn’t hire people who wrote code that looked like that, and I sure wouldn’t use their frameworks”

… it is hard to review such code, thats true, but (face the facts) have you ever reviewed a project, that works brilliantly with continuesly added modules? The focus lies alway on the next step and not on the last perfect line of code…

“Unfortunately, however, it does show us the ugly face of elitism that I myself have been guilty of perpetuating to a certain degree without ever meaning to.”

Gnah… This elitism is common use in some perl communities. But “Flasher” are the creative easy-going… I thougth! ;P

“You do not need to be a computer scientist to make amazing Flash stuff and to have fun with Flash. ”

mhm. A semi-pro can make great things. But I think, that you always can see that: “Aha. nice. semi pro.” It’s ok when you want to create things that not get reviewed by real professionals.

Greetings from Germany,

Hendrik

Since you have not replied to me either here or via email, I am going to assume that you were probably trolling and not really having problems with SWX. If this is not the case, my offer stands, contact me directly and I will work with you to make sure that you’re up and running with SWX.

Your’s is the first such feedback I’ve received about SWX and, if your complaint is legitimate, I want to hear about it and help you overcome whatever problems you’ve encountered with it.

I just emailed you as well but if you can tell me what problems you’re having with it, I can help you with them.

I haven’t had anyone else contact me with problems yet.

Take care looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks so much for your kind words regarding the post and SWX.

If it weren’t for your degrading remarks and harsh criticism of the fine work done in SWX I wouldn’t have read one of the most fantastic and inspiring blogs on what Flash is and what Flash is not.

I have taught Flash at the collegiate level for many years now and I always have 3 groups of students that join my class, the hard core developers that would rather write in Bytecode than Actionscript, the amazing designers that see the potential of Flash for creating interactive pieces that are visually stimulating and the film and animation students.

Flash is a tool designed for all three. I always have students that drop-out because there is either to much code or not enough code. This is a true shame. Flash is supposed to be used with all three disciplines. A tool that is amazing when you combine all three. If you have fantastic design, motion and animation, and then fine code you can do things that have never been considered before. Code alone can never do what Flash (the entire tool) can do. We worked on a project a while back that was a simple child’s Pictionary game and one of the “programmers took 3 days to program, abstract, optimize, etc… a game that had much less impact and usability than the same game created by one of the designers in a few hours. Good code is important. Thinking outside the box and using the best tools for the job is more important

Just like you said Aral some of my very talented students are petrified because of the code elitists that say if you aren’t using 10 design patterns in each project in exactly the right right way then you need to choose another career path.

I have seen some incredible things come out of “spaghetti code” Flash Forward film festival finalists have been guilty of writing “Spaghetti Code” some of the best and most complex games are written on engines that use Flash 5 as the code base. The important thing is that people are doing it. It is not nearly as important that a class has the proper structure as it is that people are creating, exploring, and innovating.

Your post will be mandatory reading for my classes. Please keep this post up for a long time.

Thanks,

P.S. Did Patrick really say this about Adobe?

“they believe that the market for creativity on the web is doomed to shrink”

Is he using a text based browser? Has he seen the Adobe product launch of CS3 or theFWA.com or… well… any good website? Those are some crazy words to be putting into Adobe’s mouth. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg for creativity on the web and I am pretty sure that Adobe recognizes that.

I can’t help but feel that there’s much more fun to be had in playing the game, experimenting, making mistakes even, than sitting, easily-hidden in the crowd, criticising, and nay-saying. Life would thus be a lot more serious and even less-inspiring if all observers were of this nature. You can sit and observe all you like, but if you’re not happy with what’s being made, i’m sure you have the skills to do something about it?? I would gladly pay to see that happen…