Recently, as seen via MXNA, I've noticed quite a bit of discourse over Adobe's future plans with the Flash platform. Specifically, are few people are nervous that Adobe will abandon the Flash IDE and perhaps focus on other development platforms such as Flex Builder. Its a rather interesting thing to think about at this point in time and, after reading a few posts, I'm a bit surprised that anyone is nervous.

Right now Adobe is obviously focusing on improving the Flex framework and buttoning up the upcoming release of AIR. This is on the tail end of the big release of ActionScript 3. My recent observations lead me to believe that, within the community, AS3, Flex, and AIR have been received with huge praise and equally extreme reluctance. The praise seems to be coming from developers who finally see AS3 as a decent language and Flex as a viable RIA/RIE (I don't have an opinion yet) platform. On the other side you've got the more creative types who are, not surprisingly, all weirded out by all this hardcore programming and development speak. If you sit in the middle, then you're either not concerned or happier than a pig in shit.

Flash is a funny thing because there are always a hundred and one ways to accomplish something. If you started using Flash with no prior programming experience you probably came up with ways of making rich content by using a funny system of frame labels, gotoAndPlay() calls, and a good old on(release) methods. If you stuck with it, and over the course of repeating things, you probably improved your programming skills and started using good fundamental programming techniques such as functions, for loops, conditionals, etc. You probably came up with your own unique little system for getting stuff done. And it worked! It worked well. Then classes came along . Here you either picked up how to use them (properly or not) or continued using your tried and true methods. If you started discovering the advantages of classes you probably started hearing people talk about OOP (yikes!). And again, you either embraced it and ventured into the world of "hardcore" programming or left it for the "smart" people to deal with.

And now you've got Adobe making all these great improvements to the Flash Player, the AS3 API, and supporting Flex. Awesome right? For some yes, but anyone of the old guard (take no offense) its of course a pain in the ass to get up to speed, especially to anyone that's never used an event listener. We've even heard about this supposedly awesome new application code named Thermo which seems to have a few developers nervous for some reason. Thermo kind of reminds me of when Dreamweaver came out, lots of promise of non-programmers being able to make stuff happen, but in the end it took years to mature into a product that was respected.

So now we have this disparate array of creators that have completely different approaches, skills, and reasons for using Flash. Everyone is crying and moaning about the next feature they want next. Designers want a new timeline and animation tools. Developers want added functionality and an improved Flex framework. Two totally different mindsets are barking in Adobe's ears every single day about what to do with Flash. It makes me wonder how difficult it must be to please everyone in our community now, and will Adobe continue to do it?

I sure hope so. And I don't see why they wouldn't to continue in years to come either. Lee Brimelow felt the need to announce somethings publicly due to some of this chatter on MXNA. I was rather surprised he felt the need to do this, but alas its nice to hear whats in store. He's evening taking comments on bugs, quirks, and suggested new features for the Flash IDE code editor. Can't say that I care too much to comment since I'm an avid FlashDevelop user, but its nice to see something happening there.

At any rate, I gotta say though, Adobe (R.I.P. Macromedia) has done a pretty damn good job at pleasing both the creatives and the developers over the years. The future looks bright. And I don't normally feel any sympathy for large corporations, but today I made an exception. You've got one hell of a task on your hands now Adobe. But I must say, you're my #1. I hope you never die until I decide to just start making beer for the rest of my life. You have consistently given me amazing tools to make really cool shit with. I started small and the community inspired me to make bigger and bigger things. Hell, I've even built a successful career around one of your products. So thanks.