That's Not The Way I'd Do It
The other day I was worrying about a comment another programmer had made. After looking at some code, he twisted up his face and said,
“That’s not the way I’d do it.”
He went on to tell me how he’d do it. After thinking about it a couple of days I realized that the way he’d do it, while not wrong, wasn’t any better than what was originally there. In grousing about it, the chairman of the Computer Science Department remarked,
Yeah, that’s just like a programmer.
While that made me feel better, it was also aggravating. Out of sheer habit, what compels programmers to be so petty? I don’t mind a little one-upmanship, but some discussions need to be about finding a better solution and not forever trying to tell someone how smart you are. (By the way, this isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned this problem in a post, but I’d like this to be an invitational rant and get some reader comments.)
I’ve worked with people in a lot of different fields, and while some pettiness can be found in just about all professions, We’re Number One! when it comes to the That’s not the way I’d do it (TNTWIDI—pronounced tin-widi with a short “i”) syndrome.
Continue reading ‘“That’s Not the Way I’d Do It”: Justifiable Homicide in 32 States’
Tomorrow morning bright and early I’m off to Orlando, Florida for the 2009 Object Oriented Programming and System Languages Association (OOPSLA) annual meetings. I’ll be making an ActionScript 3.0 presentation in a workshop on Sunday. Our workshop is named “Good Examples for Exposing Bad Practice” and meets in Pastoral 3 from 8:30-5:00 (Oct 25) Mine is based on the ‘Wrong Way Warrior”; so it should be familiar. On Monday, I’ll be at the Educators Symposium all day, and I would really like to meet other ActionScripters who might be at the conference
Here are some other speakers you might want to hear/meet:
1. Miško Hevery
Automatic Dependency Injection In The Land Of Dynamic Languages
2. Barbara Liskov (Liskov Principle)
Keynote Speaker
3. Ralph Johnson (GoF)
Regrowing a Language: Refactoring Tools Allow Programming Languages to Evolve
Anyway, just in case any of you will be there, drop by one of the sessions. Everyone’s been very accepting of ActionScript 3.0, and it’d be fun to chat with some fellow ActionScripters!
Some years back when I was flying with Flying Samaritans, I was invited to a party for a fellow pilot in Beverly Hills, California. Since the party involved a good deal of celebration, I had to stay over—no way I was going to fly back to San Diego that evening. The house we stayed in was a classic early California-Spanish design; a beauty in every way. The next morning, bright and early, I went for a walk along well-tended streets where no pothole or crack in the pavement dared to show itself. The streets were immaculate, as were the sidewalks and everything between the houses along and off Beverly Drive.
Continue reading ‘Mansions in the Slum: The Case of Beautiful Algorithms and Disappointing Designs’
In a recent post I voiced my admiration for artists, designers and animators but noted that they seem to have been left out in the cold with ActionScript 3.0. I added a little helper statement not in the ActionScript 3.0 documentation—MovieClip.addFrameScript(). The idea was to encourage artists not to be too hasty in giving up on coding altogether.
Quite frankly, I was surprised by the number of comments we received on that post. I didn’t think artists bothered with our kind of discussions, and was more than a little gratified to find that some of our readers identified with the issues discussed. So I started thinking about a series of posts for helping artists.
I didn’t want to do a “dumbed down” ActionScript 3.0 for artists; so I opted for an approach that would cover the same principles that we’ve discussed throughout the life of this blog. However, I would move more deliberately and touch more bases—especially the basics of OOP. Further, I decided to use video and take advantage of the new Quicktime Player that comes with Screen Sharing. So, I created a simple class to start things off, and put it in an .f4v file (H.264 format) and you can download it by clicking the download button:
You will need an Adobe Media Player that is free to download. I did not include any .fla files because I’d have to put in at least two because some have CS3 and others CS4; so you’ll have to use your own .fla files. Each video is short and will play full screen using the Adobe Media Player. The only thing I need is feedback to let me know whether this kind of thing is helpful or not. I will be focusing on graphics and loading graphics, but I welcome ideas from one and all.
Artists and Graphic Designers
For me, graphic designers and artists are angels. No matter how I try, I can only get so far in graphic design. Tools like clip art, templates, and Kuler help me achieve not awful , but that’s it. (I can even screw up clip art.) So, for anything serious, I’ve got to work with graphic artists. That’s no problem—I like working with angels.
Some graphic artist have made the transition to some version of ActionScript, but with ActionScript 3.0 most complained that they were getting left behind. Early Flash had few ActionScript options and a system for entering code that didn’t require any programming background at all. With ActionScript 2.0, things got better for developers, but designers started voicing concern over increased complexity. With ActionScript 3.0 and the loss of the ability to put code into buttons and MovieClip objects directly, some graphic artists became furious with Flash over what they saw as a betrayal. It was like a carload of kids on the way to do something fun ditched the artists and designers on the roadside.
Continue reading ‘Artists, Animators and ActionScript 3.0′
Bill Sanders
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