Review Colin Moock’s Actionscript Bootcamp

Toronto March 1,2,3 Finally, I can sleep at night after hearing Colin Moock declare you will never stop being a student of programming - so you better get your rest. He mentioned that this was common at his last lecture in Tokyo where most of populace had turned into 'chronic' sleepers spending many hours a day commuting.

Review by Brandon Flowers Throughout his 3 day intensive Actionscript Bootcamp, Moock maybe several attempts to reassure an audience of mainly Flash developers that the life of a programmer is one of constant learning; that even he - author of our favourite desk companion the Definitive Guide to Actionscript - still has a lot to learn.

After warning us that his first day would be "gruelling", Moock began with the fundaments defining variables, objects, and arrays; and then moved quickly to crafting a simple program later in the afternoon. He mainly used this first day to discuss what he considered best practices such as strict data-typing, subcontracting out event functions, and reducing dependencies. When discussing encapsulation, he asked this rhetorical question, 'How many people think _root is bad? [dramatic pause] Everybody should put up their hand.' Moock went on to argue that by addressing _root you are referencing a path that could easily change and break your code. The goal of Object Oriented Programming is that a programmer should be able to use an object without worrying about how it works. We looked a few examples some Flash inspiring examples including the work of Marumushi which Moock called 'such wikkid stuff'. Presented in Flash, Moock's slide show was also multi-user enabled hooked into his unity server, and he invited any audience members with wireless laptops to log on and follow along.

The second day was devoted entirely to OOP and building class files. Moock introduced us to this virtual pet, Yamada and used it as an example to build a basic Tamagotchi class. He then created a food class, and two sub classes: apple and sushi. Without adding any graphics, he proceeded to feed the tamagotchi as we watch it digest and finally die in the output window. Of course, Colin is also an artist and did bring out some cute graphics later on to put a face on his tamagotchi, however, it was interesting to see him initially give life and death to pure code in the output window. After invoking the final die() function, Moock noted that "anything you create, you eventually have to destroy". He used the die() function to remove all listeners and clear intervals because Flash lacks the garbage collection abilities of other languages.

Moock saved design patterns for the final - most intense - day of bootcamp. Throughout the day, he weaved three patterns: Observer, Singleton, and Model View Controller into a clock program where you could easily swap views from a digital to an analog clock face (also well explained in EAS). He organized these design pattern classes around the idea of a namespace referencing them as a packages. For instance, if Moock wanted to call a Controller class that he created, he would use this package org.moock.mvc.controller.as instead of this path: com.gskinner.mvc.controller.as leading to the Controller class developered by his colleague Grant Skinner. The benefits of using this namespace organization and design patterns are to provide to guidelines for teams to co-develop application. With MVC, team members can break up an application and work on the encapsulated classes without breaking each other's code.

As someone who devoted countless hours to both Flash design and development, I left this course feeling re-energized and excited to continue my coding quest which I know doesn't have an epic ending, but the ongoing satisfaction of solving design problems on a daily basis. I highly recommend attending his next bootcamp in May. Its a steal at just over $300, and you will certainly get your money's worth and more learning from arguably the world's best Flash trainer.

Some links from the lecture

http://moock.org
http://moock.org/lectures/
http://www.marumushi.com
http://www.sephiroth.it/python/sepy.php <--- open-source Actionscript Editor
http://subversion.tigris.org/ <--- open source cvs
http://www.ecma-international.org/
Click to read more about upcoming Bootcamps

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