Comments on: Flash’s eager young minds

By: My blog turned 5 years old this month : Chuck Freedman

My blog turned 5 years old this month : Chuck Freedman — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 21:45:45 +0000

[...] Flash’s eager young minds posted April 9, 2007. This might have been the first post I did which generated crazy traffic to my [...]

By: Charles Freedman » Ketih Peters, The Da Vinci of ActionScript Code

Charles Freedman » Ketih Peters, The Da Vinci of ActionScript Code — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 02:45:43 +0000

[...] As I lectured students and faculty at Boston University a few weeks ago, I spent an entire slide talking about Keith and his role in the Flash community. To Keith, giving back to the Flash development community is a very important thing. It has helped him put together an impressive catalog of Flash books and an equally impressive roster of conference appearances. Those lucky enough to be in Toronto this weekend can see Keith speak at FITC. He’ll be no doubt dazzling the audience Tuesday morning as he covers “Apollo Outside of the Box“. I saw Keith present first hand at the last two FITC’s (Toronto and Hollywood last October) and? it’s? easy to see why he continues to be a marquee event at these conferences. [...]

By: David Grissett

David Grissett — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:57:58 +0000

Glad to see Adobe and Macromedia came together to further simplify our developing lives.
The more simplified and powerful applications will obviously bring more competition.

The cost of production will drop and those living in small rural towns will see an opportunity to get into the development field too.

New personal businesses will spring up, along with new ways of Spamming/hacking…
But the new risks, I hope, will help educate people about system vulnerabilities. Perhaps Apollo AIR files will drive home the security concern to the average user.

By: Ryan Unger

Ryan Unger — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:26:58 +0000

Great post. I couldn’t agree more.

A small point that I wanted to add is that even more scarce than seasoned Flash developers are jaw-dropping Flash designers. It’s a resonable assumption to think that it should be reasonably easy for a programmer (JavaScript, C++, etc.) to read a book and do the tutorials. However, fnding quality design talent (such as those who have obtained a 4+ year visual communication degree) who can convert that knowledge of aesthetics into “designing with code” is a nightmare. I have met many great visual communicators—but very few (literally less than ten) who can utilize best-practices of object oriented ActionScript when designing with code.

By: Josh Tynjala

Josh Tynjala — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:41:24 +0000

If Flex Builder found its way onto computers in university CS labs, that would be huge. However, CS programs generally stick to Java, C/C++, and a little assembly. If a student wants to learn other languages, it’s on their own time. Lucky for them the Flex 2 SDK is free.

By: MD Blog » Blog Archive » See…

MD Blog » Blog Archive » See… — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 04:21:52 +0000

[...] check it out [...]

By: Maysun

Maysun — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:35:10 +0000

Well put. However, the market belongs to 12 and 13 year-olds. What I mean by that is kids now have access to more tutorials, source code, and free software than ever before. And they get it. Its not as hard and abstract to them as to old dogs trying to learn new tricks. I truly believe the Flash/Flex market will become flooded in the rising decade. If these kids obtain a solid foundation in “how to make stuff” then hopefully their untainted fresh minds will help ignite the next creative revolution. The current development community is still building the tools and infrastructure for a more knowledge-accessible world. The educational community is becoming available to anyone that has an internet connection. But while we’re bringing conferences to college campuses, why not bring them to high-schools and younger minds. Put the tools in the hands of young Jedi-knights before their motives become too skewed with business demands and pyramid marketing schemes.

By: Rob Toole

Rob Toole — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:32:42 +0000

Great post Chuck,

As someone who is a hiring manager at Fidelity, I can’t echo your statements more. Getting involved on the community through blogging and user groups is a great way to meet people and get your name out. I’ve been very successful (and lucky) in recruiting young talent from local universities and most of them have experienced tremendous growth in a realtively short amount of time. The truth is the talent is out there waiting for mentoring and good candidates will always gain insight from lectures like yours. Sometimes all you need is a push in the right direction.

And even though I’m a Boston College graduate, I’m be more than happy to help out my capable contemporaries at that other school

By: shaun

shaun — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:20:31 +0000

Personally, I see the Flex market being flooded with exceptional talent in the next 12 – 24 months. When the wider developer community starts to see the UI that can be easily built with Flex there will be big numbers of Java and Javascript developers (who will have no trouble coding in Flex at all) moving to the flash platform. With Apollo due to be released soon this will also help get many seasoned developers interested. I don’t think its the UNI kids that will flood the market it’ll be the more experienced developers leading the charge!