Service work IS disposable. And to Steven's credit, I've seen 1 Flash project in my life that was "maintained". It was Flash 5, used Generator 2, and the client refuses to upgrade even though the CEO who personally maintained the code base showed them the business sense of upgrading. Thankfully, he's the only one who had the dubious honor of updating the code base.
Product work, however, is not. If a product is successful, you live with the codebase. Macromedia Breeze, for example. Yes, Breeze went from 1.0 to 5 in ...what, less than 3 years? Still, I bet you Nigel and Peldi have some pretty good commenting going on in that beauty. I think it was Ethan Malasky, or one of the Central geeks that coined the phrase "disposable apps"; applications created for 1 time events. Perfect example is the WebDU (formerley MXDU) conference. Since 2004, they've had these phat conference apps, 2005 being the best so far. The applications are created specifically for the event, have a hard deadline that is non-negotiable, and are strictly for the coolness factor (like the photo app at MXDU where you took a picture from your phone, emailed to the server, and it showed it on the various screens throughout the conference). Now, before I say there is no point in commenting such an app whose projected lifespan is 3 days, I believe more than 1 person offered to purchase the code-base for the application. If it were me, I'd factor into the price time to comment it before handing over vs. as is. I agree, though. The more formerly trained software programmers that come to Flash & Flex creating larger, more enterprise class applications, the more things like commenting matter. To them, anyway. I've yet to get a death threat from some poor sod to who had to maintain my code... but, to be on the safe side, I always keep my glock loaded. ----- Original Message ----- From: "hank williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Flashcoders mailing list" <flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com> Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2005 7:09 PM Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] Faster code? Jesse's comments about how his code is basically disposable (my word) is interesting. I think it reflects the nature of flash and its history. For example I am working on a fairly complex project. I have been working on it for more than a year. It has lots of pieces that interact. And what happens is that I get one piece working. Then it has to interact with another piece that I get working, so I have to go back and fix the first piece. And so on. This also relates to ongoing desires to improve the performance of code and to add features. But what is interesting to me is every time I go back to a piece of code I have to relearn it. I do try to comment, and each time I go back, my comments get better because I see what I needed to comment the last time I was "in" the code. Basically, when I go back into an unfamiliar block of code, I find myself often refactoring. It helps me to "re-understand" the code but it also it has this funny effect of improving the quality of code. And each time I do this I add or edit the documentation. Of course I am writing primarily business logic and algorithms, not screen display/UI code which is probably more disposable. And I think this is my point. This issue really does depend not only on the size of the project but the type of code it is. The closer you are to the "edge" of the application, the less important documentation is. Flash and even flex have typically been more UI code than business logic which is often on the server. The more business logic that ends up on the client, the more durable and less disposable the client code will need to be. In other words, as flash becomes a real software development platform, real development methodologies will become more important. Regards Hank On 12/22/05, ryanm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Very well said Paul. Couldn't agree more - mind you this is coming from > > a guy who still writes crappy code. :) > > > Don't get the wrong idea, I still write my share of crappy, last > minute, > hacked-together code. But I do try to at least drop a comment in there to > explain why it's so ugly. ;-) > > ryanm > > _______________________________________________ > Flashcoders mailing list > Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
