All Over Software Jobs: Re: [flexcoders] Re: You are the product

Thursday, December 29, 2011

I used flash for a while, a long time ago. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but I haven't got to use AS3. This highly-hyped java-like language wasn't a good fit for me, lots of flaws. I'm starting to play with flash again, indirectly, through haXe. I will never, ever focus my time on proprietary sh*t.

By the way, haXe is amazing :)

Marcelo.

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 5:43 PM, jamesfin <james.alan.finnigan@gmail.com> wrote:

As a devoted Flex Developer, Flex has been very, very good to me. I also know that technology advancements require change (I say additions). I can remember when programming in 8086 assembler wondering when I wouldn't need to use that silly old segment/offset hack, er, architecture. Segment/offset was finally rescued years later but after writing millions of lines of code. To adapt, I had to bite the bullet and added the newer architectures to my list of skills.

Now here I am again, ahem, 30 years later doing the same thing. Almost six years invested into Flex and voila, gotta add something new to the resume to keep up. For me, it's not as much a change as valuing it as an opportunity to add even more skills to my toolbox.

I've spent some time in the past month evaluating JS equivalents to Flex. Pickins' are slim but Sencha seemed to land nicely in my spacious Flex townhouse. If you are considering adding something to your toolbox, consider Sencha. It's as close to Flex as you're probably going to get with some nice MVC abilities for instance. I've written a couple of demo apps. and rarely have to deal with the DOM. Yes, that's right folks, none of that JS -> DOM yakkity-yak. They even offer a Screen Designer to eliminate the screen layout guesswork.

If you can't tell, I'm happy with Sencha thus far and can now say that I'm a Flex Developer AND a Sencha Developer. Give it a whirl or any try any other JS solution. Your resume will only grow. ;)