Mykhel Trinitaria

10 Things Senior Flash Developer Should Know

I thought my skills in Flash/Actionscript is for senior level.  I just realized that no matter how good you are in: actionscripts, designing, problem solving, math, etc., that doesn’t mean you are for seniority level. Because you should know how to manage/optimize your codes, how is the component/compiler works, you should be strict with your attitude in making back-ups of  your codes, clean up your codes as per other developer can read yours, and should know some simple terminologies. AND so as not to compare your skills to other Flash Developers. Be HUMBLE to accept their ideas/skills and be GENEROUS to share your ideas/skills.

Here is a guide to be a Senior Flash Developer (If this stuff is “old hat” to you,feel free to make critiques on  this listing and add more references in the comments):

1.      The Elastic Racetrack
You need to understand when events fire, when code is executed, and when the player renders. It’s really the foundational concept of Flash Player.
http://www.craftymind.com/2008/04/18/updated-elastic-racetrack-for-flash-9-and-avm2/

2.      FlexSDK, mxmlc, compc, and all that jazz
You need to know what’s going on when you hit that “run” button in Eclipse.
http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withmxmlc/
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=apparch_08.html

3.      Player Events, Custom Events, Event Bubbling
I can’t imagine where flash player would be without frames and mouse clicks.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/event_handling_as3_03.html
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/flash/events/package-detail.html
http://www.tink.ws/blog/custom-events-in-as-30-dont-forget-to-override-the-clone-method/
http://jacwright.com/blog/70/how-to-listen-to-flash-events-that-dont-bubble/

4.      Statements, Keywords, and Directives
You should never be surprised by a new “word” in as3. If you don’t know what “static” or “override” or others are, learn them.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/2/langref/statements.html

5.      ASDoc
Someday, you’ll re-read your code and have no idea what it does. The stress here is on proper documenting, but generating asdocs is nice too.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=asdoc_3.html

6.      Managing visual assets (images, fonts, CSS, etc)
Flash is visual. So you need to know how to manage assets with code.
http://www.gskinner.com/talks/flexlovesflash/
http://code.google.com/p/queueloader-as3/
http://code.google.com/p/bulk-loader/

7.      Arrays, Collections, Dictionaries, Mapping
You’re not just working with one MovieClip here, so you need to know how to control multiple objects at once.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/Array.html
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/07/as3_dictionary.html
http://code.google.com/p/as3ds/

8.      Programmatic motion (tweening, easing)
If you wanted things to stay still, you should’ve stuck with HTML
http://blog.greensock.com/tweenmaxas3/
http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Actionscript-3-0-Animation-Making/dp/1590597915/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243014431&sr=8-1

9.      OOP and Coding Against Frameworks
The days of a one huge .as file are over. You need to smartly move your code into organized and reusable objects. Also, now there are plenty of popular as3 frameworks to help manage your code. Read up on them and start using one.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/oop_as3.html
http://www.actionscript.org/resources/articles/684/1/Object-Oriented-Programming-in-AS3/Page1.html

10.  Version control
Unless you think your code is worthless, you need to learn how to back it up properly.
http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads
http://versionsapp.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
http://git-scm.com/
http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/