Wow - I am tired! It's been a busy few weeks, and it doesn't look to be slowing down, even well into February/March... Can't complain! God is good!
Things are packed out, with no shortage of projects, opportunities, and ideas. It's also been nice being able to partner up with different organizations and individuals in various capacities. I always thank God when we have the opportunity for creative freedom and the chance to show what He's made us capable of! We should be having some great big pieces of news in the next few months, so either look for it here or on the
Exit 31 site to keep up to date on new projects and happenings. As always, I'll post more on that later (if I remember, of course).
Anyway, it seems like technology is on the accelerated path as well, and one example of that is the release of
JavaFX. I just found out about it, and after some research, the best way I can describe it is a direct competitor to an development platform like
FLEX, but aimed more squarely at native Java developers.
It seems like most desktop programming languages (JavaFX included) and platforms in general are making efforts to widen the door of entry by simplifying the logic and migrating toward more generally accessible and understandable scripting languages like Javascript, Actionscript, and PHP. The twist is that I've noticed that the trend among those scripting languages, particularly Actionscript (especially with 3.0), is the opposite - choosing to move toward more traditional OOP (object-oriented programming) languages, taking cues from Java and C# to help those programmers come into a familiar environment.
The result seems to be two-fold. On the one hand, the applications perform significantly better and are more robust and versatile, especially for those who have the prior exposure to familiar APIs or standards. On the other hand, I kind of pity those who are just now hopping in the game because the learning curve to make anything worth value or unique is getting steeper as well.
An example of that is with the release of Adobe Creative Suite 4; I'll take Flash 10 as the example. It's a familiar enough environment with nearly every change being an improvement or advantage in some way. Things like the adoptation of a bezier curves based animation system and applying those keyframes directly to the object rather than a timeline, as well as the addition of a Z-axis and perspective, plus the [great] inclusion of the
Pixel Blender Toolkit which is it's own language itself, allow for unprecedented control and cool effects that just weren't possible before (leveraging AS 3.0 and Flash 9/10+ significant performance advantages due the the new virtual machine). The downside is that nearly every project will at some point require significantly greater than average knowledge of the inner workings of Flash, probably far greater than what most designer/animator only artists prefer. For me though, it's a progressive improvement and I find that more and more problems I run into can be solved by natively included functions or packages.
Oh well, that's just the price of admission. Thank God for open-source initiatives and extensive online API documentation, helper classes, and of course, the Holy Spirit and the wisdom given by God!
Wisdom was with God all during creation :-)
"Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind." Proverbs 8:30-31
Speaking of performance advantages in AS3, check out this demo from
ROXIK.
