Re: FLASH: Flash/Director Integration

[Branden Hall]

Agreed on that point... however...

Step by step is only part of learning...

If you want to be able to truely be creative with flash scripting you need

to know more than just how to build a few small things and paste them

together...

I can, and have taught many, many people how to use Flash's actionscript to

get a particular result... but what I tend to see people asking for more

often than not is the knowledge to be able to go all the way from problem to

solution on their own.  I was told by one of my students that part of this

is my fault, he said I make it look too easy...  which is perhaps the

case...  However I have many years programming experience, especially in

limited languages such  as actionscript... languages in which the all mighty

hack is still quite valuable...

I can, and do, teach technique all day long...  how to do specific tasks...

even to some extent how to approach  problems, and debug your code...

But, what many people fail to remember is that just like an artist, a

programmers skill is created over time. You can show me how to draw 2 point

perspecitives and the basics of shading in a two day course... and at the

end that is what I will know how to do... I won't be an artist.... I will

have the tools, but the critical ingredients are practice and time....


-= Branden J. Hall

-= Multimedia Developer/Instructor

-= Fig Leaf Software


----- Original Message -----

From: Tom Green <

tgreen17home [dot] com

>

To: <

flasherchinwag [dot] com

>

Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2000 10:28 PM

Subject: Re: FLASH: Flash/Director Integration





Branden Hall wrote:


>  A very big reason that you don't have this kind of thing in Flash is

> because of the language barrier...

> Lingo is a very robust OOP language with many MANY built in functions...

> Flash is a basic half-procedural language that requires work arounds and

all

> sorts of hairy code to do things... often that hairy code is very

techincal

> in nature and requires a lot more of a programmer than a similar lingo

> script would.


Which is why I was whining about it, Branden.


Designers don't have the time, inclination or patience  to learn "hairy

code"

or the "work arounds". Walk me through the day to day stuff in a manner I

can

understand. Give me the code and an explanation that tells me what I am

doing

and I am a happy camper.


I see this all the time in my night school classes. Designers are there to

learn the basics and to get concise, well-written documentation that lets

them

leave the class and do it themselves.  As a teacher, yourself, I will bet

you

have yet to have any student sit there and say, "Yeah, I'm here for the

hairy

code." Usually, it is, "So that's how you code a preloader. Cool." The

reason

we get that response, is because we used language the designer understood

and

walked the student patiently and carefully from "Start Flash" to "Insert the

final .swf into Dreamweaver."


That is what's missing, Branden.



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