Flash

I've had some downtime at work the last few days and decided it was high time I learned myself some Flash. So I grabbed a trial version of Flash Professional 8 and set to work, running through some tutorials.

I am really surprised at how fun it is! It feels very similar to working with a graphical editor or a movie editor, only with the ability to program and script behavior. Pulling off animations is incredibly easy - within about an hour I had a decent "Indiana Jones map effect" working (with some Google help). Laying out a user interface is intuitive and fast. Is this what it's like to develop with Visual Studio? It's certainly light years easier than the manual layout processes I've endured during my brief forays into Swing development.

There's plenty that Flash can't do without the help of another language like Java, but there's plenty it can do as well. I still need to go through more tutorials and figure out exactly what the limitations are, but my first real project may be either converting my old JavaScript video poker player, or possibly a computer adaptation of Das Ende des Triumvirats, which I started in Java a few months ago but never got around to finishing.