Yeah, I think many of us wish we could build a portfolio of products that we could sell many times, but FOSS and technology in general is making many things free or so cheap that a lot of folks have to give up on selling products and turn to selling services, supplies or accessories instead. And selling services often means a lot more work than selling the 100th copy of a product.
So the potential pay off for you for FlexJS, if you’re Android apps don’t work out, is to lower the cost of creating other products for your store, or to sell yourself as the expert on helping some of these folks migrate their code bases, or other folks to create new products. You may not have to actually work tons of hours writing the code as much as doing high-level overviews and troubleshooting the hard problems. I am personally going to try to avoid owning any large code bases. Also, AIUI, the Apache Way allows for some company to come and bribe you to implement some feature or bug fix they want in FlexJS so the more you prove yourself as the guy who can make a difference, the more attractive you are. Until you showed up again, if some future customer found that there was a problem in the compiler, they would have to negotiate with me to get it fixed. Now if you have the cycles, I can direct them to you. IMO, it is also part of the Apache Way that you get going on something and then run out of time, either forever, or for a while. Because it is all in the open, other folks can pick it up. You’ve already sort of seen that once just in your coming back into this project. So, do what you can. For me, anything you can do helps. But I would think about the payoff in terms of selling consulting services more than products unless FlexJS can help you build those products. -Alex On 6/3/15, 8:37 AM, "Michael Schmalle" <teotigraphix...@gmail.com> wrote: >I am just being devils advocate with my own mind. > >I really don't have interest in talking about language features. :) > >You have to realize, from my end, it's a black box with "all these >companies". I mean I only have so much time and there is a fine line that >I >can give of my time for free to let others make money migrating things. > >I like working with compilers, that is obvious but then again, in about 2 >months my life is going to change because I am going out on Android with a >bunch of applications I will have to support. With that, I don't want to >create to many fires that I might now be able to stoke. > >I never even really made money from app dev, all my income came from >selling UI components. So I was never in the industry of maintaining a >large code base. > >You probably can see I am wrestling with myself of how far I can go with >helping, since I still don't have something in the next 4 months based of >this work that would translate to something else, like food. :) > >Anyway, it's more just me trying no to bite of to much. There is a lot of >work to get the existing as -> js working in FlexJS and all the other >stuff >that needs to be done for something like Josh's idea. > >Mike > > > > >On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 11:22 AM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com> wrote: > >> >> >> On 6/3/15, 8:04 AM, "Michael Schmalle" <teotigraphix...@gmail.com> >>wrote: >> >> >No I just meant there will never be an AS4.(generics, first class >> >metadata, >> >method overloading types, things other languages are getting, just >>look at >> >Java8). They kewn they had to give an option of lambda functions >>because >> >sometimes Java is just to verbose to do simple things, AS3 can be >>looked >> >at >> >that way with some things as well(compared to rapid fire javascript). >> >> IMO, AS4 was a whole new language. I might be missing something, but >> every time I see “let” I think back to BASIC, not forward. >> >> If you think FlexJS needs generics and method overloading to even have a >> chance, well, then if you are right then the uphill is very steep, but I >> don’t think that is the case. And if FlexJS can be come popular without >> these things, then folks with skills will show up to help make it happen >> unless their implementation is somehow blocked by the VM’s verifier, and >> that’s only true if folks require the SWF verification step. Right now, >> everyone writing JS apps is living with compile-time verification, why >> can’t we at least to the same? >> >> We don’t need to store metadata in a trait. If we can stick it on the >>JS >> class, we can stick it on an AS class. >> >> C++ (at least, the MS compiler several years ago) used decorated names >>for >> method overloading. I keep thinking that should work for AS as well >>until >> you start calling things with [bracket] syntax. But maybe that is good >> enough. >> >> Feel free to fork threads to discuss implementation pros and cons on AS >> language enhancements. >> >> And as I said elsewhere, the big money for FlexJS may be in the >>migration >> of existing code bases. Even if we never get as big as TS, there seems >>to >> be enough existing AS code bases to keep our committers nice and busy >> helping folks migrate off of Flash until we’re old and gray (oh, wait, >>I’m >> sort of old and gray already). >> >> -Alex >> >>
