BIT-101 2005 and the Future

Jesse Warden had a nice retrospective of his year, and it got me thinking. Well, I was already thinking, but it got me thinking about writing about what I was thinking about.

2005 was a mixed year for me, but overall I’m pretty happy with where I’ve wound up.

The only particularly bad part was my health. The first half of the year it seemed I was sick more than not. Then I developed severe joint pain, almost daily fevers and pretty bad fatigue. I got tested for just about everything under the sun. Doctor was completely baffled. Finally, last long shot before renting me out to specialists was a test for something called Sarcoidosis. Bingo! Bad news is they don’t know what causes it and there is no cure. Good news is, it will probably go away on its own after a year or two. The symptoms have already diminished greatly. I feel lucky to have gotten such a mild case. It could have been much worse, potentially even fatal if it got into the nervous system.

But, like I said, that was the only bad part, and that’s mostly behind me. Otherwise, things have gone quite well for me.

I started, finished and got published my first cover-to-cover book.

I left a job at a company that had started out great, but had deteriorated into an unworkable environment, and got a great new job in sunny (well, not so sunny at the moment) California. The commute from Boston is rough, but I only have to do it once every six weeks. I’m working on a single, massive project, architecting it from the ground up. My boss is a Flash developer, completing his masters in software engineering at Carnegie Mellon. I’ve learned so much and incorporated so many great practices.

I started college. Got through Algebra and College Writing with a 4.0 GPA. Signed up for Precalculus, College Writing II and Intro to Computer Science next semester.

Started a Flash Platform User Group.

I was looking over the list of goals I wrote for 2005, and I accomplished most all of them. I failed miserably on the old “get in shape” one, gaining probably 15 pounds instead. 🙁

I have to say next year looks to be lining up nicely as well. I have a few writing projects planned. Job looks good. Health looking up.

One thing that’s kind of a gray area for me, is where I’m headed, career-wise, in the long run. It seems the Flash world is running headlong towards Flex 2. While I see the benefit, I just can’t seem to catch the Flex bug.

I love the whole architecting, planning, designing, coding, testing thing. I love digging into, using and creating frameworks. Creating and using components, great. RIAs are cool. But I still can’t get excited about Flex. Maybe I’m a bit masochistic. I like to code everything from scratch. I’m not saying Flex is bad. I think I’m just not going to be riding that bus. I think Flex is the perfect tool for creating a certain kind of RIA. Something with forms and components and buttons and screens and layouts. I guess that’s what doesn’t excite me. I’ve done quite a few side projects this year, and the ones I really enjoyed couldn’t have been done in Flex. Most didn’t even use standard components. They are more innovative, visual, design-oriented things, but heavily scripted for motion, physics, or animation, etc. Things that make people say, “Wow, cool!” even if they aren’t totally practical. If I can combine that with a well thought out architecture, patterns, planning, etc., I’m happy. But I would be bored to death spending all my time making online banking apps, hotel reservation systems or shopping carts. Maybe I have a limited view of what Flex can do. I’m sure I’ll be playing with it more as time goes on. Like I said it’s a gray area. And, I’m doing the whole school thing, so who knows, I might latch onto something else entirely and go in some completely different direction.

Another thing I’ve been struggling with is the whole concept of BIT-101 itself. The site started out as an “experiment-a-day” concept more than four years ago. The last year has been pretty slow in that area. I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I’m not going to get back into posting daily or even near-daily experiments any time soon.

I remember the day I started BIT-101. I couldn’t have imagined where it was taking me. In the last four years, I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to, and far, far more! But that’s taken me to a different place, and the site needs to shed its skin and enter its next phase of life. Just not sure what that is going to look like.

Of course, the site will still be here, and I’ll keep everything on line that is there. And I will always be playing with Flash and will always be sharing my discoveries in an open source venue. But exactly how I want to do it is something I still need to work out. I’d like to get back into sparking some community projects like the old “25 Line ActionScript Contest” of way back when. I have some unfinished plans along those lines.

Well, that’s all I have to say for now. Good night and Happy New Year! I have no doubt it’s going to be another good one!