Tuesday, August 18, 2009
AS3 Developers and the iPhone
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 
Silently I have been watching a revolution of another kind take shape in the Flash Developer Community. A revolution that I at first found to be surprising, but now find exciting and interesting.
For a long while, the most exciting content on the web has been developed within the fold of the Flash Community. The Flash Community is an organic, open network of creative and devoted people constantly pushing the boundaries of cool, interactive, data-driven, and experimental. I am not going to get into a debate of AJAX versus Flash versus Silverlight, or anything like that... because I simply don't think you can bring Flash down to compare it to the others.
Of the hordes of Flash Developers, many have dipped their toes into the world of Xcode, Objective-C, and the iPhone SDK. I am seeing iPhone sessions popping up in many Flash conferences. I am seeing hardcore Flash developers (many for ages) twittering about various Obj-C methods, blogging about iPhone development, etc.
This is exciting because the iPhone itself is a platform that brings me a lot of satisfaction developing for. It's not Flash in terms of it's immediacy (at least not for me yet), but the things you can do with it after putting in some effort (googling, reading books, pouring over some code, reading header files, etc.) is astounding.
When I am developing for the iPhone, I feel like the sky is the limit and I am constantly trying to do things that were easy for me to do in Flash. Because of that Flash experience, I am able to deliver some compelling applications. And so are many other Flash developers.
The iPhone has a lot going for it in terms of apps. Yes, many throw their first few attempts on the store just to see what that feels like... but in the end we are going to be treated to a lot of wonderful content as more and more Flash developers and designers start learning Obj-C and making apps of their own.
AS3 is certainly fun. But the iPhone distraction is fun too; it's mysterious, enabling and almost as open as the Flash Community. You're still more likely to pull code out of readers on a Flash mailing list than you are on a Cocoa mailing list, but I see that softening a bit.
Anyway, this is just something I've noticed and something that I really like seeing.
For a long while, the most exciting content on the web has been developed within the fold of the Flash Community. The Flash Community is an organic, open network of creative and devoted people constantly pushing the boundaries of cool, interactive, data-driven, and experimental. I am not going to get into a debate of AJAX versus Flash versus Silverlight, or anything like that... because I simply don't think you can bring Flash down to compare it to the others.
Of the hordes of Flash Developers, many have dipped their toes into the world of Xcode, Objective-C, and the iPhone SDK. I am seeing iPhone sessions popping up in many Flash conferences. I am seeing hardcore Flash developers (many for ages) twittering about various Obj-C methods, blogging about iPhone development, etc.
This is exciting because the iPhone itself is a platform that brings me a lot of satisfaction developing for. It's not Flash in terms of it's immediacy (at least not for me yet), but the things you can do with it after putting in some effort (googling, reading books, pouring over some code, reading header files, etc.) is astounding.
When I am developing for the iPhone, I feel like the sky is the limit and I am constantly trying to do things that were easy for me to do in Flash. Because of that Flash experience, I am able to deliver some compelling applications. And so are many other Flash developers.
The iPhone has a lot going for it in terms of apps. Yes, many throw their first few attempts on the store just to see what that feels like... but in the end we are going to be treated to a lot of wonderful content as more and more Flash developers and designers start learning Obj-C and making apps of their own.
AS3 is certainly fun. But the iPhone distraction is fun too; it's mysterious, enabling and almost as open as the Flash Community. You're still more likely to pull code out of readers on a Flash mailing list than you are on a Cocoa mailing list, but I see that softening a bit.
Anyway, this is just something I've noticed and something that I really like seeing.
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