In this episode we chat with Adam Flater. Adam is active member of the Flex community. In addition, he is the founder of the Merapi project, which provides a bridge between Adobe AIR and Java on the client.
Resources:
Category Archives: Flex
Episode 8: First Steps in Flex with Bruce Eckel
In this Episode, we welcome Bruce Eckel in a video we recorded at the QCon San Francisco conference. Bruce and James recently released a book titled, First Steps in Flex. The book is designed to be a quick intro for those interested in learning Adobe Flex.
In the video, we discuss the Code Jams and OpenSpace conferences Bruce hosts, the RIA landscape, and James and Bruce’s book.
Bruce’s Upcoming Events:
Code Jam: Flex / AIR Jam (February 25th-27th)
Open Space Conference: Java Posse Roundup (March 3rd – 6th)
References:
Bruce’s Hybridizing Java Article
Episode 7: Enterprise Flex Applications and Anvil
In this Episode, we chat with Anvil project founder Ryan Knight. Anvil is an Open Source project that was built to help make Enterprise Flex development easier. In addition, it provides a portal environment for running Flex applications.
Ryan shares details about the problems Anvil solves, and the projects long-term goals. We also discuss some of the challenges of building applications with the Flex framework. Also, look for the cameo appearance of Gorilla Logic CEO, Stu Stern.
Resources:
Episode 6: Flex for Managers and Architects
This video is the genesis of Drunk On Software. We had discussed doing an interview on Flex for Software Managers and Architects for quite a while, and only that day decided it could be a series. We start the interview by calling it Scotch Talk and endorsing Chet Haase’s humor book. We are still trying to master things like the audio and video size, so please bear with us.
In the interview, we cover many architecture questions around Flex and AIR in detail, including the following items:
- An overview of Flex
- Joel Spolsky’s (Joel On Software) comment on Flash / Flex not being “webby”
- Potential issues with Flash being a closed platform
- Real cost of adopting Flex for Enterprise Project
- Flex for large applications
- Compiler Performance
- Testing Flex Applications
- Comparing RIA Platforms
- Performance and Scalability
- BlazeDS
- Security Constraints
- Accessibility in Flex
Episode 4 – When I am King
In this episode we chat with Chet Haase from the Adobe Flex SDK team. In his spare time Chet entertains and educates many with his humor blog, his recently released book “When I am King“, and a technical book about Swing co-authored with Romain Guy called “Filthy Rich Clients“.
Here’s the episode. Let us know what you think.
BTW: We’ve switch to flip.tv for the video hosting. You can now subscribe to the podcast feed in iTunes using the URL:
itpc://drunkonsoftware.blip.tv/rss/itunes/
Or to the show RSS using the URL:
http://drunkonsoftware.blip.tv/rss
Episode 3: Performance Pitfalls of Flex's ArrayCollection
On a recent project Jon discovered some performance issues with ArrayCollections in Flex. In this episode we discuss some of the realities of working with large data sets in Flex. For additional details read Jon’s blog about the performance problems with ArrayCollection and check out the associated bug in Flex’s bug db. We’ve also put together two Flex demos that illustrate the performance issues:
- Instancing Array vs ArrayCollection Performance (view source)
- Adding items to Array vs ArrayCollection Performance (view source)
Check out the video and let us know what you think.
Episode 2 – Flex Automated Testing and FlexMonkey
In this episode we interview Stu Stern of Gorilla Logic. Stu and Gorilla Logic recently launched FlexMonkey, a record / playback testing tool for Flex applications. Stu discusses the in-and-outs of FlexMonkey, and how it differs from other Flex testing tools. In addition, Stu dialogs with us on the conceptual and religious aspects of software testing.
FlexMonkey Resources:
BTW: We continue to learn more about the video making process. The sound and light is better in this episode but we did forget to turn off our cell phones which causes that annoying occasional noise. Bare with us as we continue to improve the quality and substance of these videos.
BTW2: You will notice that in this video we reference “Scotch Talk” which was what we planned on calling this before we came up with the “Drunk on Software” name.
Drunk on Software 