The Official SpiSoft BlogWork http://blog.spisoft.net The Web, Music, Art, Games -- Everything a Modern-day Renaissance Man Needs Thu, 03 Feb 2011 23:28:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 The Yoda Pattern http://blog.spisoft.net/2009/the-yoda-pattern/ http://blog.spisoft.net/2009/the-yoda-pattern/#comments Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:02:40 +0000 Jeremy Hilts http://blog.spisoft.net/?p=84 I made this joke at work and some people thought it was funny. Others wanted my head.

try {
	if($do) {
		do();
	} else {
		doNot();
	}
} catch {
	die("there is no try");
}

The Yoda Pattern: An instance where an exception is unrecoverable.

]]> http://blog.spisoft.net/2009/the-yoda-pattern/feed/ 0 Flashy Flash http://blog.spisoft.net/2009/flashy-flash/ http://blog.spisoft.net/2009/flashy-flash/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:59:13 +0000 Jeremy Hilts http://blog.spisoft.net/?p=42 Recently, my business had a need for some Flash development and I had just come off of a rather demanding project that, today, finally went live (yay!). Now, I’d never done any Flash to any degree of seriousness in the past; however, there was a need to be filled and I’m not afraid of a challenge. In a couple of days I was able to write a pre-loader that could be configured to play multiple videos in a time line for set intervals. For those of you out there on the Flash scene, that’s a rather minor accomplishment… but I’m pretty pleased with it, having never done such a thing before.

I’ve never been a big fan of Flash for general purposes. It’s too heavy for my liking. I like the web to be neat, structured and nicely degradable. Now, I never said that I don’t like it. I believe that there is a purpose for it; that purpose just happens to be its nom de plume. Should you want it flashy, so shall you do with Flash. Hey, all-in-all, it’s a neat trick.

Well, it used to be just a “neat trick” back in the archaic days of ActionScript. ActionScript 3 is, actually, quite respectable. After writing my pre-loader, having abstracted my objects to levels that made me happy, I took on a whole new respect for the use of Flash. Sure, ActionScript 3 is practically Javascript with a shiny coat… but I’ve also come to respect well-written Javascript a heck-of-a-lot more than I used to. Key word being: well-written. I guess that’s two words…

After writing a few things in ActionScript 3, I started thinking of the possibilities… Oh, the games I could write… Oh, the fun little effects I could accomplish. I still don’t think it should be used as the multi-purpose happy-web-solution that it’s often hyped to be; but I can definitely think of a number of things that I’d use it for.

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