I just returned from FITC Chicago which was a great conference. While there I got a chance to interview R Blank who did a session on transitioning from AS 2 to AS 3. This is still proving to be a struggle for many people and I wish there more sessions like this at conferences.
Lee
[... I just returned from FITC Chicago which was a great conference. While there I got a chance to interview R Blank who did a session on transitioning from AS 2 ...]
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© 2010 Lee Brimelow
There seem to be problems with jeroenwijering.com so your video player is not loading. Can you please provide other options to view the video?
Informative video, some interesting points made there. When there’s a tight deadline, there’s often little time to experiment and develop new material, especially when you’ve for instance got a lot of AS2-code from before that’s already working – it can be difficult to find time to rewrite it all. I’m under the impression that this is quite common and might be one of the reason there are still many feeling more comfortable with AS2 code, as writing in AS3 is fundamentally different. At least I can identify with that
Interesting, I’m going through the AS2-AS3 transition at the minute, but find it intimidating to jump straight into AS3 on client work. If anyone has any good links to help with the transition, I’d love to see them. L
I think another big point is the compability – you always need developers still working in as2 because there are a lot of customers who explictly want it to be flash7/8 compliant.
And R Blank said, coping with as2 and as3 at one time is hard to do and really slows down the learning process, especially if you got into developing just through actionscript and now are trying to learn OOP
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As3 is a great thing anyhow… although i don’t appreciate CS4 is already coming while people are still migrating to CS3.
Great post – interesting to see his perspective on the challenges. I totally agree with the issues he presented. I’d add another obstacle: non-programmers.
For those that may not be familiar to programming, AS2 was a bit easier to pick up. While object oriented approaches provide more robustness and flexibility ultimately, it can be MUCH harder for someone to transition to if he/she does not have programming experience, which is the case for many Flash users.
I would guess that there is a large class of users that are not going to make the transition to AS3. One of the truly great things about Flash has been the ability to work with graphic elements and programing within one interface in a very intuitive way. The results might be a little “Rube Goldberg”, but the process was one that has more of a “hands on” feel than allowed by AS3. The overall conceptual change in the approach to working with Flash is not going to work equally well for all kinds of users, and as personal libraries of code become obsolete, many will not bring the energy and enthusiasm they had initially for the technology or be inclined to make the reinvestment in time to bring their involvement to the same level. Concurrently, standard web technologies, and improvements in browser behavior make it attractive, interesting, and challenging to develop web applications in formats that are not going to be unusable in the future. Thanks for the great blog and all your efforts Lee,
Graham White
That is correct, I totally agree with you Graham, I don’t think it’s a good idea to invest time in Learning AS3 if AS4 will just blow out into pieces like AS3 did to AS2.
@Wassim: I don’t believe you’ll be seeing AS4 for at least 10 years though. Probably a solid investment to dive into AS3 if you’re thinking of holding off in favor of AS4… I hear it’ll be awhile!
@Lee: I was looking out for you at FITC but didn’t get to bump into you! I just wanted to let you know that your tutorials were a HUGE reason I was able to initially get into AS coding, and without your contributions to the community I probably wouldn’t be starting my first job as a production developer next Wednesday! You’ve made a significant impact on this coders life, and I couldn’t thank you enough!
Next conference beverages are on me!
@Elliot you are absolutely right. AS4 is light years away so learning AS3 is a must. We will occasionally add APIs but the core language won’t be changing anytime soon. Wish I could have met up with you and I’m really happy to hear about your new job. Congrats!
In my opinion there are two fundamental reasons or rather mistakes that adobe made when presenting the new language. First is the fact that you can’t import old swfs into AS3 projects. This means that starting a large project in as3 is simply too intimitating because you know that you will stuck with AS3. When AS2 came out you could gradually move over to object-oriented code but wehenever something wouldnt work you could do it the old fashioned way.
Secondly the compiler is too strict. A lot of poeple I’ve talked to get frustrated when attempting the very basic things in AS3 because the compiler won’t compile for some unknown reason. Adobe could have eased the transition by creating a very forgiving compliler at first.
Hey all:
Thank you for the post, Lee, and for all the comments. If anyone is interested in the slides and source files from the talk, I’ve posted them to here: http://laflash.org/node/862
And while I agree AS1/2 was more conducive to getting designers into programming than AS3 is, I do not believe AS3 is off-limits to anyone. With the exception of making a button in AS3 (which was way easier to teach newbs in as2), AS3 isn’t actually harder — it’s just different. In fact, in many ways, it’s easier, because it’s far more consistent and logical. In fact, AS3 is harder for those that know AS2 than it is for those brand new to Flash. It’s important not to confuse AS3 (which can be coded, without strong typing, on the timeline) with the cool, advanced coding techniques that are now possible (but NOT required) in AS3.
Also, I believe Adobe has said that AS4 will follow ES4 (ECMAScript 4), which will likely not be complete before CS4 comes out. Enough *S4′s for you?
-r
–
R Blank
r@almerblank.com
I attended the FitC and found the seminars to be pretty interesting. Was fun watching R Blank talk, especially since he was so much more vivid than some other people.
Regarding the talk about AS4, the pre-production suggestions for ECMA4 are just out of the box and none of it seems to be approved. That being said, I would be genuinely surprised if it was out the door by the end of the year.
I was one of those unfortunate ones who got trapped with AS2 work far too long after AS3 came out and it cost me unfortunate time to re-route my work into AS3. Glad I did though, there’s no comparing the both. AS3 is just flat out finally a ‘real’ programming language instead of the pseudo-lingo that was AS2.
interesting movie
Hey R. Whaz up!! l8r