Flash Coder

The London Flash Developers and Designers user group meets at 7pm on the 26th this month (that’s this Thursday) at the South Bank University. It’s just round the corner from the Elephant and Castle tube station.

This month I will be giving a talk on Moving to OOP. So if you’re a beginner or intermediate developer, or a Designer with an interest in the code that controls and enhances much of your designs and you want to know how to move to Object Oriented Development and Design then come along.

You need to register to come along so get to the site and click on the big red “Join us” button. or go direct to the membership page. You can connect with over 350 fellow developers and designers.

It’s in the Keyworth Center on the 1st floor. On the map, that’s building no. 10. (Keyworth Street, SE1)

It doesn’t normally meet so late in the month but unfortunately there were extenuating circumstances. See you all there

The Logic Bureau just posted on this user group. It’s not a new user group and though it has more than 350 members it is still relatively under the radar. I know I didn’t know about this group until a couple of months ago. They are an excellent group for beginners and intermediates, with incredible on site facilities like fully equipped developer/designer labs and lecture rooms available for the members, enabling them to not only hear great speakers but also to get their hands dirty in a work lab environment. There’s lots more but I won’t repeat what’s on the Logic Bureau site. Have a read and get along.

No, that’s not a typo in the title. This level of unreliable install, broken functionality and application incompatibility…actually, strike that, application sabotage, is utterly Microsoftesque. I left the Microsoft world behind me, for the most part, because I wanted to concentrate on using my software and hardware to develop on WITHOUT having to be an engineer in order to do so. I don’t want to be able to guarantee that I will have to check through and upgrade all my software and drivers just because I update to the latest version of the OS. I don’t want to be greeted with a huge list of software than is no longer compatible, or worse, discover it for myself. Yes, I know that some of this is unavoidable, but at least with Apple the OS is usually written with the idea that ‘people’ have to use it and so it should just work. It’s one of the things I love about Apple. As a software developer myself, I know this is not an unreasonable request. It’s how all software should work and on the whole, how Apple software and hardware works.
However, this release, Snow Leopard, is as close to Microsoft OS upgrade stress as you can get. Actually I would argue that at least Windows doesn’t cause MS’s own applications to die. Take for example the very commonly complained about “application exception has occurred” error than many, many people are getting. The most annoying example of which, is when Mail (Apple’s own Mail client) crashes when I attach any file to an email. Dear God!! Surely, given the number of people out there complaining about just this (never mind all the 3rd party applications that crash), surely Apple must have tested their own applications????

There is speculation that with the imminent release of Windows 7, Apple wanted to be first to launch their new OS. Well, I just want to say to whom ever made that decision at Apple: You sir, are an idiot of the highest calibre. Go back to Microsoft, where that kind of approach is lauded as promotion worthy, or at least is an excuse to wheel out the Ballmer Chimpanzee show.