nothing yet | jason madsen

Recently I had a chance to go back and sit in on some courses at a local university ( not the one I currently teach at ). In so doing I sat in on two semesters of Java. The courses were intended to teach both Java and object oriented programming. Before I go too far, let me say that I’m comfortable with Java, in fact I actually enjoy Java. Having said that, I will say that curriculum for beginning oop development should be, in my opinion, taught using ActionScript. I realize that ActionScript isn’t a perfect language. There are some things that need to be addressed (The lack of an Interface for the flash.display.DisplayObject for example). But taking it all in, the good and the bad, I think ActionScript is a really good language to learn with.

ActionScript has all the usual strengths for beginning developers: strongly typed, compiled, object oriented, a vibrant and helpful community. I feel that the biggest benefit for new developers is that most find it quite easy to create visual elements with ActionScript and Flash Player. As such I think students get the added benefit of seeing their objects in action. Having a relatively painless process that allows students to create visual objects helps students see the state of their objects. It is a great system. It’s the difference between calling a setter method and printing something to the console versus calling a setter and visually seeing your object update.

I have been teaching Object Oriented Programming using ActionScript for just over two years now. I can’t image having to do this in another language and getting students as far as I currently do. You can argue for and against ActionScript and the Flash Player all day. But it is a great language to cut your teeth on. Lately I find myself more and more happy to be a Flash / Flex / ActionScript developer.

Norm Soule has released v1.0 of his new PixelBlitz Engine. It is a system for utilizing BitmapData to represent your MovieClips and Sprites. There are several built in features (layers, pixel level collision detection, etc) but the most impressive reason for using it is the speed. There are several demos, full documentation, and commented examples. Definitely something to look at for highly interactive content, or game development. As I get into it a bit deeper I will put together a more detailed review and an example or two. At first glance this seems REALLY impressive.

jason