Old Friends, new stuff. And Flex too!
Well, Linuxworld San Francisco has come and gone. I have to admit it wasn't the most exciting LWCE I've ever been to, but it is always nice seeing old friends and meeting new ones.
I also have to admit the coolness factor was several degrees off the record. While he was there, I'm told, I never managed to see Maddog. I did get to catch up with Russ Pavlicek (Cassatt), Robin (Roblimo) Miller (sourceforge) , and Adam Goodman (Linux Magazine). I had a chance to talk James Gray and Jill Franklin of Linux Journal and express my wants to see some part of the culture of open source return to the "new, cool stuff". I had a chance to laugh with Patrick McConaughy (Avocent) and his oddball sense of humor.
I even got to teach a bit of Flex.
Yeah, me. (and wipe that smirk off your face!)
Adobe was part of a desktop Linux focus on the show floor. Thanks to Dell, who provided the laptops (running Ubuntu, definitely drool-worthy), we had the open source components of Flex loaded up, and Flash as well. James Ward, Flex Evangelist, who built our quickie tutorial taught day 1. David Zuckerman, one of Adobe's Computer Scientists in Flex Engineering taught day 2. And I taught day 3.
The concepts of Flex are easily gotten. The language is elegant. And the capabilities on Linux were amazing. But here, go see for yourself. The course materials are here.
Anyway, logistical difficulties aside, the course went fine. People are always amazed at how easy, and powerful Flex is, and just how quick you can become proficient in it.
So, give it a try. Go get the bits you need from Flex.org or fire up one from here. And let me know what you think!
Let's see you at Max 2007:
