You can prove your geek creed by your ability to create a regular expression without any assistance, no online lookups, no quick book checks, no IM's for a little assistance. I fail miserably. For simple ones I'm pretty good, but anything more than basic pattern checking and regex is way to cryptic for me to quickly rattle it off in my head. Thankfully, for those of us who don't speak Klingon, there is a great new Regex tool available. Big props to Ryan Swanson and his Regular Expression Explorer.
Before I stumbled across Ryan's handiwork I used Grant Skinner's Regex Testing Tool. It was good and extremely helpful, but Ryan really took it to another level. The interface is simple to us. There are a bunch of prebuilt expressions to sample and test with and best of all, there's a community feature where people can share their regex love.
You can read up about the whole development story here. Better yet, just go try it out. And remember, practice safe Regex.
Yes it is a sprout and on November 3 I will officially start sprouting for Sprout as a Flex developer. If you haven't heard of Sprout or the SproutBuilder before you should check it out. It's a super tool for non Flash/Flex developers to create Flash min sites, widgets, and banners, without any actionscript experience.
It's been a crazy few months with everything that has been going on with the economy and work. I am really looking forward to working with another great team on a great product.
Ok, so the world must be coming to an end. The economy is in the crapper, the environment is evidently about to implode and to top it all off, Adobe just released Flash 10, so now I've got more learning to do. Trust me I will tie all this together, just stick with me and read on.
Here are my three thoughts on the economy, the environment, Flash 10 and how they relate to each other and your opportunities as a Flex/Flash developer.
Thought 1:
The economy and environment sorta go hand in hand. Follow me here. North America is a net importer of energy and goods. We burn through natural resources, goods and cash (or at least credit) like there is no tomorrow. Eventually it has to catch up with us. The cash/credit part just did and the energy part is getting close. So how do you kill two birds with one stone. Stimulate the economy with investment in new energy sources/uses and also encourage behavior that lessens energy consumption.
What does that accomplish? A few things. More gets spent on R&D, jobs get created, consumers buy new, more environmentally friendly goods. The economy gets a boost ... over time, and the environment gets help through less polution, conservation, etc.
Ok, I can't really do much about the first except as a consumer to demand more energy friendly products and vote for government that helps to make that happen. But on the conservation part I can do plenty ..... including working from home. Here's just one way it benefits the environment. No commuting, one vehicle for a family of five instead of two, a huge reduction in energy consumption and pollution. In last month's issue of Wired magazine there was a great article about telecommuting and it's numerous benefits. Take two minutes, give it a read, good stuff to chew on.
Thought 2:
Being someone who is currently in the process of actively looking for work, I can honestly say the whole economy exploding right now had me a little worried. The company I was contracting for felt the housing market crash pretty hard, so my contract unexpectedly came to end, hence the "developer for rent" sign. I quickly fired out some emails, hit all the usual places for developer jobs/contracts and to my surprise discovered right now is a GREAT time to be looking for work if you are a Flex developer.
Ok I wasn't totally surprised, my inbox is constantly hit with requests, but I hadn't actively looked to see just how much work was out there. Jesse Warden has a great take on the current economic situation as it relates to Flex/Flash developers. He's pretty optimistic like I am, it's a bull market for Flex. Sure some companies are shedding employees, but work still needs to get done, especially in the web development world. If you are a contractor, or thinking about becoming one, it's a great time to be picking up work. Within days of firing off emails and catching up with people in my network I had plenty of good opportunities to consider (more on that at a later date).
Thought 3:
Flash never stands still for long, maybe that's why it's called Flash (that thought just came to me). Flash 10 has just been released with lots of new goodies for developers to figure out. I've said this before and I'll say it again. In this arena you have to be constantly learning. There is no down time. You stop and you are done. I'll go back to Jesse's post again.
One particular problem that continually plagues Flex, even to this day, is the lack of qualified hybrids.
If you can keep up with Flash and Flex as it evolves, you've got a skill set worth gold right now, regardless of what the economy is doing.
If the economy stays the way it is and part of what this guy says is true then companies should be pumping money into web development work. That means opportunities for those who embrace change and don't run from a challenge. It also means that if you are a Flex developer, or better yet a Flex/Flash hybrid, you have a huge bargaining chip right now when evaluating and negotiating work prospects.
Your Flex skills are in huge demand. Companies need you and are willing to bend over to get you .... so here's how it all comes together.
So how does this come together?
Going back to "Thought 1" and "Thought 2", you have a chance to do some good for the environment and help a company(s) weather the economic storm, push for the telecommute, work from home angle. Sell it as a competitive cost advantage for the company and also an environmetal benefit.
And that my friends, is how the economy, the environment and Flash 10 are intertwined .... who knew.
Hey everyone, Kim Kristen Schofield is doing a short RIA survey. If you do RIA development with any tool, Flash, Flex, Silverlight, Java, Coldfusion, ASP, Ruby, PHP, AJAX .... you get the point, go do the survey. You can score a nice CF 8 poster if you do.
For the past two plus years I have worked almost non stop on two separate long term contracts, MRN and Lymabean. Well, as they say, all good things must come to end, so now I'm back on the market. If you are in need of a Flex or Flash developer who can do the following, contact me.
Understand server side technology and integration with Flash/Flex
Architect a Flex application to manage and manipulate complex data
Integrate your application with a database
Work with Cairngorm, PureMVC and design patterns in actionscript
Create custom Flash and Flex components
If you are not looking but know of an opportunity feel free to fire off my url and info, I'll be sure to follow up with a gracious thank you.
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About
Derrick Grigg is a professional Rich Internet Application (RIA) developer and consultant based in Toronto, Canada. He specializes in architecting and developing applications using a variety of technologies, most notably Flash, Flex and Coldfusion.
