Mario Talavera Writes

Moving from a software development position where most of the application code is in Coldfusion to a position doing Flex development has brought a few difficulties in my professional life. One of the most impacting ones is that reference resources are not the same.

Sure, there is some overlap. Both Coldfusion and Flex are Adobe products, there’s quite a few reference books and articles online that deal with both products. Even some of the most vocal Coldfusion bloggers use Flex and vice-versa. These have not proven as useful as I always thought they were.

Besides derailing a colleague’s thought process, one of the best resources I have used so far is Adobe’s online documentation for Flex, most specifically, Programing ActionScript 3.0. FYI - all these documents are available bundled in a zip file with all available pdfs from Adobe and its totally worth the download.

The other most helpful resource is the book titled Object Oriented ActionScript 3.0 by Friends of Ed (Apress). This books starts from the very basics and covers a wide array of topics. I particularly like that, while most of the content is new to me, some of the topics are familiar. I feel this book has a good mix of topics I really need to grasp and topics that merit review but that I don’t have to focus so much on.

I am only half way thru book now and I’m learning a lot form it. Mostly, it is making me feel comfortable in this ‘new’ environment I find myself in.

The only thing I find distracting, and this is applicable to me because I am not familiar with ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0 (barely with 3.0 so to say…), is the conscious contrast the authors present of the the differences between the old and new way of writing ActionScript. I acknowledge this is essential for those familiar with the evolution of the language but I am happily ignorant of such differences and intend to staythis way.

Odd that one of the most useful things to a seasoned ActionScript developer is of so little use for me… I can see myself going back to these parts of the book and finding some bits of wisdom I wish I had paid attention to in the first place. Rock on.

I feel the authors have done a great job of simplifying my life and I want to thank them for this. The book’s main web-page did not come up when I searched Friends of Ed but does come up from the Apress page (parent publishing company of Ed’s). I wish I had found this book a few weeks ago instead of scouring the web for helpful advice in all the wrong places

Lastly - for all who believe all you need to learn you can learn from the internet (Google me an education) and that books are overrated I still disagree with you.

Not like that; like in a very special shop. An amazing tech shop where I’ve spent the past 4 weeks. Timing could not be more interesting or peculiar. The biggest irony is the title of this blog since, for the past few weeks, I have had absolutely no time to write. I have been absolutely exhausted.

Currently, my second son, Daniel is a month old. Between a new boy in the house (Diego is three) and a new job, I have been neglecting my three readers lately. Lots to write, little time. Enough of this; time moves on.

I am having the time of my life where everything is lining up better than I could have expected. I am truly blessed.

I am on my fourth week at new job. Less than a month ago, I was working for a financial services company (FCE) and now I am working for a CDN company (Highwinds). This has been a big change of pace for me. A lot less regulation, a lot faster pace and I am working with a very different technology product (Coldfusion is out; Flex is in).

The biggest thing that I’ve found out so far is that, the more I learn about Flex software development, the less I realize I know about Flex software development. I walked into shop feeling like an expert. In 2 seconds flat, and for two weeks, I felt like an absolute beginner. Currently, I feel like a journeyman. I am not certain how next week is going to feel. I hope to start making big contributions sooner rather than later…

The nicest part of working at Highwinds, so far, is being surrounded by so many competent technical people. Starting with my team (The User Experience Team), which is very knowledgeable, and just about everywhere I look, Highwinds is a technology company. It feels a little little like a .com, a successful one.

Some of the most fun I have ever had at a job I had at a now defunct .com called Joepix. This new place brings back fond memories which I am very eager to add to once more.

I have to learn how to walk first; this is a whole new ball-game for me and I am not the youngest in the group this time

I just found this presentation in the OReilly’s ETech Conference Page.  The Powerpoint slides are included in the page.

The presentation describes the benefits, and proves by example, how combining prediction methods can improve the accuracy of predictions.

The overview of current usage of these models is very interesting.  It seems lots of companies do use these models to improve their business.  What I find odd is that there seems to be very little noise on the web about things like these.

Maybe this problem domain is so far removed from the usual work I do that I seldom hear about it.

Anyways, the slides do intrigue me; time permitting, it would be nice to explore some of these ideas and how they relate to WhatMovieNow? Fun stuff.

It would be awesome if Microsoft eases OLPC problems and helps speed up program adoption.  I would try Windows on the OLPC; maybe it would even allow me to install lots of games and educational software for my son.

Everyone’s biggest concern on this is that Microsoft is going to corner the OS market ‘globally’.  I think Microsoft HAS cornered the OS market a long time ago.  I also think it makes other OSs better.  There is definitely room for more than one OS but all the bickering could very well kill this program and then everyone looses…

Why is it so hard to take advantage of this? The only negative effect would be an exclusivity agreement between OLPC and Microsoft. That would really suck.

Having watched the video a few times; I cannot even tell that its true… The OLPC laptop does not have much power to deal in such a speedy way so to say.  Soo, either good engineering getting XP on it or good editing for video.  See for yourself.

The next 360|Flex Conference, which will be held on Ebay’s Campus (like the first one) has just had its

The schedule for the upcoming 360|Flex Conference has just been posted.  It looks promising.

FYI - they even have included the free Sunday event.  Awesome!  In my opinion, this is still one of the best conferences around.  Looking at the schedule, seems like the hardest part would be to pick between sessions scheduled at the same time.

Yikes! - No sessions repeat.  This conference needs a few more days just for this; too much info!

I am reading some fascinating background information on the OLPC program at radian.org. The comments are very good as well.  I am left with mixed emotions. It is well known that the OLPC Program has not been a raging success as we would have hoped.

The article talks about a scenario, not unlike that of software development on big projects, where egos get in the way, many people have multiple agendas, and finally, the key people in the project become so disenchanted with the situation that they feel drained and let down.

I think the challenges outlined in link parallel the state of software development in many places. Places I’ve seen, places I’ve worked at. The common outcome is usually that the primordial purpose of a program/project/initiative gets lost in the midst of bickering, ego driven agendas and communication failures.  People loose sight of what the problem is and focus instead on supporting past decisions instead of evaluating current concerns.

I have been following this program since I saw Nicholas Negroponte’s video at Ted with a lot of interest. Thou I believe there’s many different ways to help those developing counties besides ‘giving children laptops, I completely respect the idea of enabling children (our future) to compete on a level playing field as they grow.

If this is the original idea of the OLPC Program, maybe they should have started in the US. There IS a big educational divide in our nation which does impact us. They could have set up smaller, less ambitious programs and learn from them as improving education for our children as well.

They have already changed he notion of little, low powered laptops. Every manufacturer is bringin small devices to market because of this. It would be a shame if that is all that comes out of this program.

I hope they find some way of bringing themselves together and proving half the world wrong.

Recently, I had the opportunity to show off and give an overview of the type of development I do for fun. I knew I was going to be asked ahead of time. I tried not to think to much about it. I would just carry my laptop, and do a show and tell on whatever I was most recently developing for fun… I am always writing something for fun. I believe that preparing for one of these is cheating…

The problem is, thou I have many applications on my laptop I develop for fun, most of them are UNFINISHED applications. Skimming my SVN server, I realized this, yes, a bit too late.

I read with some amazement, a long list of cool things I wanted to write. I guess 60% of them are unfinished. No unlike a book you just have to buy and them put on shelf for just the right time and the right time never comes.

My list of unfinished projects is full of interesting things I just HAD TO WRITE at the time. I have developer accounts with every website I can think off.

Yahoo? check, Google? check (Google App Engine; this is another one I just HAVE TO WRITE)… Microsoft? yup. And a ton more developer networks that I am always ‘going’ to learn to use…

There is a stock tracker that would message me when a stock of interest was a good buy. This was to be an awesome Flex application that would run by itself with minimal configuration. It would keep a list of stocks of interest, at the time Berkshire Hathaway type A and type B, and would calculate if, at any point, it is worth putting your money into one versus the other. Not calling heads or tails either, based on mathematics from the letters of Warren Buffett himself.

I’ve, of course, written the typical TODO list in more than one language. An address book, a property inspector suite (think about those property appraisers on location but lots of them) that works both online and off-line, a movie recommendations engine (this one I did get out, mostly because I opened this blog to force me to finish things. Another awesome idea (this one with a friend), a document manager… document scans, bar-codes, all the good stuff… Still not much to show.

Often, I am the person at work who complains the most about task switching and how detrimental it is to development. For example, this week, I’ve switched three times from the most important project to the MOST important project… Not fun; hard to keep a rhythm.

At the same time, I am doing the same at home. I can justify some of these: book example does not work on a Mac, book has a bunch of errors, etc. After these things… I am the only one to blame for my unfinished work.

One of the primordial reasons of this blog is to force me to finish these ‘hobby projects’, to put my thoughts out there for those who may benefit from whatever I find out along the way.

I sincerely hope, the next time I am honored with the opportunity of showing my work, I can go down m project list of cool things I just had to write. Maybe not 100% portfolio worthy but something more than a bunch of big ideas with small efforts behind them.

Here’s hoping for those opportunities and the dedication needed to follow through with my desires.

I have had some time to fiddle with DreamHost to properly host Peter Armstrong’s Pomodo sample application. I have changed how it was being hosted so that I do not have to make any changes to the code prior to uploading it from my computer and I’ve decided to use a sub-domain instead of a directory inside of domain.

I’ve revised the link on previous post as well. I think http://pomodo.bitterbug.com sounds a lot better.

Ok, ok, application still does not do much. You can, at least, register (I am not keeping any info; feel free to make it up) and login afterwards. It just felt like the right time to host this exercise because chapter four (creating the UI) was so much fun.

Lastly, yes, I am keeping the cheese-ness for now; if its good enough for the book; its good enough for me.

On to chapter five where things get even more interesting…

Never before have I hosted a rails application on a production environment. Never have I thought about this until now.

Having recently finished chapter four of FlexibleRails, Expanding the Flex UI from Flexible Rails, it dawned on me that people are always complaining about deploying rails applications.

I have had a Dreamhost account for the longest time. I opened it for another-now-defunct-project and seldom play with it anymore… I read their wiki, which is great, and it seems moving over the Pomodo application from the book will be simple as can be.

Following their instructions, we have Pomodo, my first flexible rails hosted application.

Ok, ok, so it does not do anything right now; I haven’t done anything else but read thru Dreamhost wiki and followed directions. I expect to update this hosted version of ever so often. Very cool indeed!

Nice observation; application runs faster on Dreamhost than on my local computer. A few things come to mind; application is running in production mode AND it is not using WEBrick. Awesome.

One of the most insightful documents that Macromedia put out back in the day was a web page of Coldfusion Coding Conventions. I think these where authored by Sean Corfield; some minor googling would tell the story.

It provided sensible guidelines for developers to follow if only to make code easier to understand and share in a team environment. At the time, I remember that the place I used to work for used this document as most of their coding standards… even if no one liked capitalizing every variable which I think document stated lol.

In my opinion, great effort should be put to make code human-readable (comments, specially funny comments, are NEVER redundant) and these documents help a development team play nice together…

I just found out about Flex Coding Conventions and think its great. Unlike Coldfusion’s Coding Conventions document, which I think never got a single update, this one is a work in progress. I hope they continue to revise and add to it.

I am sure I am not going to agree on everything stated in document but that is irrelevant.

Going back to making code better (human-readable), the case for following a document like this is awesome. This is a great resource and I’ll be sure to come back to it next time I go over my flex code yay! Thanks Adobe.