Ted Patrick > { Events & Community } > Adobe Systems

I am in Tokyo this week and have had to learn many new things. The most intimidating was the Tokyo train system at rush hour. It sounds simple (buy a ticket, find a train, board it, and get off at your stop) but it was a very humbling and frustrating experience. It has reminded me of my first experience learning Flex and made me conscious of how intimidating learning new things can be.

I learning Flex 1.5 during the spring of 2005 and honestly I was terrible at it at first. I knew Flash MX 2004 inside and out and could code a RIA in a heartbeat with the timeline, AS2, and components. I had mastered Flash and ActionScript for my consulting work and I felt confident in my knowledge and market value. I could convince clients to pay $75-$100 per hour for Flash development. Then I got the Flex call...

I got an email from LifeOptions who was working on a large scale healthcare project in Flex for Disney, Aetna, and Pacificare. A developer had quit unexpectedly and they were shorthanded at a critical time during development of the assessment engine. I looked at the project proposal and wanted to do the project in Flash Authoring but they insisted on using Flex (much to my frustration). The surprise was that they were willing to pay much higher rates for me to learn Flex. When I agreed to the project I was nervous and intimidated by Flex because it represented the unknown.

I felt like I had been tossed head first into a swimming pool and forced to swim. I struggled with the Flex development paradigm until I got some simple things working. It is within those simple examples that my confidence in Flex grew. I discovered lots of amazing features and after just 2 weeks had a working prototype for the client to review. I took a risk in learning Flex but that decision has paid 1000 fold for me personally.

We (Adobe & Flex Community) need to do a better job at making Flex easier to learn. We need more code examples so that developers can discover how Flex works. We need to make the Flex Community discoverable and searchable. We need to lower or eliminate the barriers to Flex adoption by developers outside of our community. Just as I struggled to learn Flex, many developers will experience the same. My trip to Japan has made me conscious that learning new things is never easy and that even the things we take for granted can be intimidating for new users.

Here are a few mistakes I made during my first Tokyo train ride:

1. Insert 1000 Yen into ticket machine, Press 1000 Yen ticket button. As I departed the station the machine ate my ticket. I only needed a 130 Yen ticket.

2. Finding the right train. When I arrived at Adobe Japan I was handed 2 maps, one for trains and one for subway. Each map has 100 stops on it. Hmmmmm....Where am I?

3. Boarding the train. Stand in a line on the platform. When the doors open you literally flow onto the train with the crowd. I am not sure my feet were moving at all it was so crowded.

4. Walking within the train station. It is like crossing a river of people to get where you want to go. If you have any doubt about where you are headed, you must be very careful when you decide to stop. I paused and 4 people bumped into me.

After 2 rough trips, I am now able to navigate the Tokyo train system with confidence and can now travel a bit farther. In a way it is identical to learning Flex. Once you get started and build confidence you can begin to explore the possibilities. Hopefully over time you will discover, as I have, that the only real limitation in Flex is your own imagination.

Struggle, understand, discover, and explore!

Cheers,

Ted :)