Flash Tenth Anniversary

Stacey Mulcahy

www.bitchwhocodes.com

Stacey Mulcahy is a Flex and Flash developer who once had a torrid love affair with Macromedia Director. When she's not building rich Internet applications that even designers like, she can be found showing others how to do the same thing as a Flash instructor. She rants more than raves on her Flash-centric blog www.bitchwhocodes.com.

How and when did you get started with Flash?

I started to use Flash seriously when version 6 was released. I was forced into using Flash—or at least I am sure that’s what I thought at the time, being a Director fan and purist. A co-worker was on vacation, and one of his Flash projects required changes, so it ended up being a part of my workload that week. After that, I started to explore Flash more on my own time and soon accepted my first job as a Flash developer with Northcode Inc.

How has Flash contributed to your creativity, or taught you about design and the web?

Flash has taught me about the importance of resourcefulness and community as a developer. The Flash community is a vibrant and open one, because the members make an effort to give back to the community as much as they have taken from it over the years. Getting help in the Flash community is often just a forum or blog posting away. People are constantly posting experiments or insights that push the boundaries of the technology. It’s hard not to be inspired.

Please share one or more favorite tips, lessons, or cautionary tales about Flash.

Create everything with the mindset that someone, at any point in time, might be taking over your Flash project. This will force you to be more organized and explicit. Despite what the Flash player thinks, "Symbol 491" in a Fireworks Object folder is neither organized nor intuitive. As an instructor, I once gave out an assignment with very strict requirements that was to be completed in two parts. After the students handed in the first part of the assignment, the projects were then redistributed. Students had to complete the assignment working on files that were not their own.

I tend to refer to myself and other developers as "Flashers." Trust me, there are two people you don’t use that term with—one is your mother. The other is a Customs Officer.