FWIW, I made the transition to AS3 about a year ago (eLearning lags a little behind the rest of the commercial world).
Here's what made my journey easy... 1) Use the GAIA framework as a starting point for all my projects. 2) Watched Colin Moock's 'Lost Actionscript Weekend' DVDs 3) Purchased 'Essential Actionscript 3' 4) No practice runs, just started building projects with the new tools GAIA reduced the amount of 'housekeeping programming' significantly. No need to write loaders, preloaders, asset management, plus excellent site creation utility (scaffolding) and a solid user community. The 'Lost Actionscript Weekend' videos mirror the "Essential Actionscript 3' book structure. I found the book too heavy to sit through, but the videos brought it to life for me (and made the book more useful as a 'more information' tool). Just biting the bullet and using these tools immediately on commercial work was MUCH less headache than I'd anticipated. The problems I needed to solve were about the work at hand, and not about chasing down housekeeping bugs. Next on the horizon is RobotLegs - it seems to be gaining traction, and appears to play nice with GAIA. Anyone else shared this path? Or have an alternative to offer? C: -----Original Message----- From: flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com [mailto:flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com] On Behalf Of Karl DeSaulniers Sent: Thursday, 1 April 2010 11:50 AM To: Flash Coders List Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] What good is a Controller? I agree Taka. I need to kick it into hight gear is the consensus I am hearing. So I am on it. I don't think it will be as painful as I was thinking, but we'll see what my learning curve is. I must admit (at the risk of brown nosing) I have enjoyed reading all of the posts on this list about AS3. It has helped and I am not even doing AS3 yet. There are a lot of professionals on this list. People who really know their stuff. I feel lucky to have found it. And Dave rocks.. My hat is off to all of you and my thanks for tolerating my dinosaur ass... :)) Karl On Mar 31, 2010, at 7:39 PM, Taka Kojima wrote: >> Hey, if you're doing well with AS2, there's nothing wrong with that. >> It's not going away for a long time. Jason is right, and to his point: The interactive industry is probably one of the the fastest changing industries in the world. If you aren't willing to change (and I am not saying you are not willing Karl), pick a different career. As web developers, competence, being able to quickly learn and pick up on new technologies, etc. go hand in hand with being good at what we do. Sure that could be said for any field of work, but I think it's extremely relevant for this field. AS2 will be completely dead and irrelevant in 3 years, in 10 years from now Flash Player will probably not even support AS 2 content, if Flash Player itself is still relevant then. Talking about the web's future 10 years from now is generally not a good idea, so I am not going to go down that path. On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Merrill, Jason < jason.merr...@bankofamerica.com> wrote: > Hey Karl - a few more things - check out the Migration Cheat Sheet for > AS3 here: > > http://actionscriptcheatsheet.com/blog/quick-referencecheatsheet- > for-act > ionscript-20/ > (Some of the other cheat sheets will be useful too.) > > Read through that and you'll start to get comfortable with the > changes. > It can seem painful at first, but start slow - for example, create a > test project where you use AS3 to insert a Textfield on the screen and > set a value on it - then create a button that removes it or something. > Pretty soon you'll be off and running - and we'll be here to help. > > > > > Jason Merrill > > Bank of America Global Learning > Learning & Performance Solutions > > Join the Bank of America Flash Platform Community and visit our > Instructional Technology Design Blog > (note: these are for Bank of America employees only) > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com > [mailto:flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com] On Behalf Of Karl > DeSaulniers > Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 6:08 PM > To: Flash Coders List > Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] What good is a Controller? > > I tend to agree with Jason here, I am a freelancer and I have missed > out on a lot of jobs because I am not an AS3 developer. > Your probably right on the ease of use and the functionality of AS3 > being better, otherwise what would be the use of creating AS3. > > Again, thanks for all your comments. > I am going to try to migrate as soon as I can. > I know its just an amount of getting into it and getting it done. > > Best Regards, > > Karl DeSaulniers > > > > On Mar 31, 2010, at 5:01 PM, Merrill, Jason wrote: > >>> Hey, if you're doing well with AS2, there's nothing wrong with that. >>> It's not going away for a long time. > > I disagree with that - what happens when you lose your job and have to > put your resume out there? And IMO, it's nearly almost gone away > anyway. Sure Flash player supports it still, but most developers have > moved on. We recently hired a Flash developer as you know, and if the > candidates didn't have AS3 on their resume, they were immediately > discounted as a viable candidate. > >>> COBOL used to be the dominant language for business apps. I haven't >>> programmed in COBOL for 25 years, but I still see COBOL gigs posted. > > Because there were still lots of huge systems built in that language - > Flash apps are much more short lived than that, and while there may > still be a few AS2 jobs out there, they are increasingly becoming > fewer and fewer by the day. Besides, just because there are a small > number jobs out there for COBOL doesn't mean you should continue to > focus on that as a skill and bet your future career on it. I'd much > rather be fluent in Phyton, C# or Java than COBOL any day. > >>> By the time you run out of AS2 gigs, you might be old enough to > retire, > > I think it will happen much quicker than that - depending on how old > you are though I suppose. I guess I don't see AS2 being as long lived > as you do. > > > Jason Merrill > > Bank of America Global Learning > Learning & Performance Solutions > > Join the Bank of America Flash Platform Community and visit our > Instructional Technology Design Blog > (note: these are for Bank of America employees only) > > > _______________________________________________ > Flashcoders mailing list > Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > > Karl DeSaulniers > Design Drumm > http://designdrumm.com > > _______________________________________________ > Flashcoders mailing list > Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > _______________________________________________ > Flashcoders mailing list > Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Karl DeSaulniers Design Drumm http://designdrumm.com _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders This e-mail, including any attached files, may contain confidential and privileged information for the sole use of the intended recipient. 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