Awesome Adobe Flex Developers You Should Follow

10 Awesome Flex Developers You Should Follow

These individuals have all inspired and/or helped me at one point in time. I’d like to take a moment to point them out and say thanks. I’ve personally either worked with, met or digitally communicated with all of these peeps. They have all helped me greatly and their insight is fantastic. You should check out their blogs or follow them on twitter to gain great Flex development advice, code, tutorials, articles, etc. Thanks to all of you very much!!!!

Laura Arguello
Laura and I worked together on an article on the Mate framework for Flash Magazine. She was instrumental in providing technical reviews and input regarding the details of the framework. Laura is the CTO at ASFusion. She specializes in RIA development using ColdFusion and Flex. She regularly gives presentations at tech conferences and user groups. She is a Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer and the manager of the Orange County Flex User Group.
Check her blog: http://www.asfusion.com/
Check her side project blog: http://www.mangoblog.org/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/instante/

Matt Chotin
Matt provided input and feedback on both the Flex Best Practices articles I authored for the Adobe Developer Connection. In addition he reviewed and provided input and feedback for the Flex 4 Overview article I authored for InsideRIA. Matt is a Product Manager for developer-focused technology after having been a software engineer for 6 years. He is the Product Manager of Flex at Adobe.
Check his blog here: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mchotin/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/mchotin/

Eric Feminella
Eric and I have worked together on several Flex and AIR projects together and he’s also provided mentoring to me. Eric is one of the best Flex developers I’ve ever worked with and one of the nicest guys ever.  Definitely an extra special thanks to Eric!! Eric is a Software Architect specializing in providing quality solutions and services for enterprise and consumer class RIAs targeting the Adobe Flash Platform and associated technologies.
Check his blog here: http://www.ericfeminella.com/blog/

Adam Flater
Adam and I started chatting on twitter in early 2008. He’s provided tons of great help and guidance on Flex, Java and design patterns to me ever since. Adam is a Technical Architect and Evangelist at Roundarch. His career has been centered on building innovative graphical user interfaces and research of emerging technology. He is also a contributor to InsideRIA and the creator of Merapi.
Check his blog here: http://adamflater.blogspot.com/
Folllow on twitter: http://twitter.com/adamflater/

Kevin Hoyt
I’ve seen several presentations by Kevin at Apollo Camp, the LA AIR Bus Tour and Flex Camp Orange Country. Kevin is probably my favorite presenter. He provides what seems to be effortless presentations that are easy to understand, interesting and just plain cool. Kevin is a Platform Evangelist with Adobe, and is actively involved with both the Flash and JavaScript communities.
Check his blog here: http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/
Follow in twitter: http://twitter.com/parkerkrhoyt/

Andy Powell
Andy is pretty much a guru in my book when it comes to Flex / server integration and development. Andy has answered a number of my questions about Java, BlazeDS and Spring integration for Flex development. Andy is a RIA developer located in the metro Atlanta, GA area.  He is currently employed by Universal Mind where he builds really cool applications with tools like Java, Adobe Flex, Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe Spry, Hibernate, Spring, & other cool technologies.
Check his blog here: http://www.infoaccelerator.net/blog/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/umandy/

David Tucker
I first noticed David’s work when he created the blog series on learning Cairngorm. He did such a great job it was amazing. He provided written explanations, code example and videos. Kudos man, I still send people there to learn about Cairngorm. David Tucker is a Rich Internet Application developer, author, and trainer. David currently serves as a Software Engineer at Universal Mind. In addition, David also blogs regularly at InsideRIA where he produces the Weekly RIA RoundUp podcast. David also recently completed the AIR 1.5 Cookbook (with a great group of co-authors) and the Lynda.com series, AIR for Flash Developers.
Check his blog here: http://www.davidtucker.net/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/mindmillmedia/

Sean Voisen
I have to send extra special thanks to Sean because he is the one that first got me into Flex development in 2006. I had looked at Flex in 2004 and 2005 but never really got into it. At that time I was doing a lot of Flash based work but Sean helped me see the light. Sean is a really cool guy and a pleasure to be around. Sean works with a lot of different technologies and probably wouldn’t classify himself as a Flex Developer. Sean has been a teacher at the Art Institute of California and has worked with companies like AOL and Adobe.
Check his blog here: http://voisen.org/
Follow on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/svoisen/

Jesse Warden
I’ve been a fan of Jesse, or jesterxl since 2003. Back in the Flashcoders mailing list days. I first noticed Jesse because he would answer what seemed like an endless amount of Flash and ActionScript related email threads. He emailed me once in 2003/2004 and helped with a question I had posted. I’ve been a huge fan of Jesse ever since. Jesse also hooked me up with the team at Enablus where I did some Flex development in 2008 and 2009. Jesse is a professional software design & development consultant. His background is in multimedia, blending art & programming together. If it’s cool, and computer related, he wants to be involved. He is currently a Flex & Flash Architect at Roundarch.
Check is blog here: http://jessewarden.com/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/Jesterxl/

Rich Tretola
I first started talking to Rich online in 2007 when he did some testing of an AIR app I had developed at that time. He provided very helpful guidance and insight to resolve some issues with the app I was having. Rich also has provided a much appreciated stream of patience and input for articles that I’ve authored for InsideRIA. Thanks again Rich!!! Rich has been building Internet applications for over 10 years and has worked with Flex since the original Royale beta version of Flex in 2003. Other than Flex, Rich builds applications using ColdFusion, Flash, and Java. Rich is highly regarded within the Flex community as an expert in RIA and is also an Adobe Community Expert. He runs a popular Flex and AIR blog at EverythingFlex.com, is the community manager of InsideRIA.com and was also a speaker at the Adobe MAX 2007 conference in Chicago and the MAX 2008 in San Francisco. He will be speaking again this year at MAX 2009 in LA.
Check his blog here: http://blog.everythingflex.com/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/richtretola/

A Flex / Flash guy learning more about Java

A Flex / Flash guy learning more about Java

Understanding more about Java is great. A good amount of knowledge can be shared between Flex/ActionScript 3.0 and Java. I’ve worked with Java in the past, compiled some applications, read the tutorials and some books, helped build a Java based LMS and also worked with Adobe on writing a simple Java socket server, but I wanted more of a thorough understanding of the language. The University of California at San Diego offers a great series of programming and software development courses. These classes are really affordable so I decided to take a Java II course. It’s been seven weeks and so far the experience has been awesome. The end goal is to become more familiar with the core Java language. My hope is that this will enable me to have greater confidence when working on Flex and BlazeDS projects. (A really cool stack I’ve been playing with recently is Flex/Cairngorm, the new Spring/BlazeDS integration and Hibernate/MySQL. Eventually I want to get this running on Glassfish. Something else I’ve been looking into.)

Some items we’ve covered in the Java class so far are: SDK installation and command line compilation, data types, control flow, variables/operators, numbers, arrays, objects and classes, static classes and methods, method overloading, object construction, constructor overloading, OOP basics, packages, commenting, generating JavaDoc, inheritance, abstract classes, polymorphism, sub/superclasses, reflection, inner classes, graphics programming, event handling, Swing and Collections including Maps, Lists, Sets and the Comparator interface. We’re compiling all of our homework using the command line. It’s pretty cool. The class also demands a pretty rigorous reading schedule. The three-pronged-learning-approach is working well for me: lectures, reading, coding (homework and labs.) The ins and outs of the language are really sinking in.

A few immediate benefits to learning more about Java are: Flex and BlazeDS / LCDS integration, strengthen fundamental OOP understanding and comprehension and also gain knowledge of OOP concepts not available in Flex/AS3. Learning Java also provides the opportunity to get exposure to Swing (Flex’s distant relative). Also, since the Flex compiler and other aspects of the Flex SDK are written in Java this opens up the door to greater understanding of the Flex SDK and even bug contributions. Java makes extensive use of design patterns and there is a plethora of existing Java code to look at, use and learn from. (Cairngorm was born from J2EE design patterns.)

There are several differences that I noticed in Java. Some items available in Java and not in AS3: static classes, abstract classes, private constructors, constructor overloading, method overloading and Collections. Working with Arrays is a LOT different, working with numbers is different, working with Strings is different and String comparison is different. There are no Hashmaps and no hashcodes in ActionScript. No equals() method. Another difference is that you have to implement your own design patterns more often in Java. Not a bad thing, and good to know how to do, but Flex takes care of a lot of things behind the scenes: events, data binding etc. I noticed that when coding Java the developer is expected to implement interfaces more often than in Flex/AS3. This is pretty cool; it involves more work but provides more power.

It’s been a cool experience and I wanted to share some of these thoughts and observations. I think more developers come into the Flex world from Java vs. the other way around. For some reason Java sort of reminds me of AS2… I may try to post some Java source code soon if time permits…

Original post http://seantheflexguy.com/blog/2009/02/20/a-flex-flash-guy-learning-more-about-java/