Got back last night from this free event sponsored by Adobe. I’m located in the Philly suburbs, so a 3.5 hour drive to NYC on Sunday night (NJ Turnpike was backed up….) and a 2.5 hour drive back, but it was well worth it.
There were about 300 attendees, with plenty of room left (well, not *plenty*, but usually you didn’t have to sit right next to someone else so there was always an empty seat next to you if you wanted).
Colin Moock started with all of the basics of OOP. In fact, the first half of the day was just a review for me as I’ve done a bit of java development and OOP in the past. Colin was pretty clear that he couldn’t take questions until later in the day/at the end of session, and for the most part he stuck to that. Can’t blame him and am glad he took that approach or else we would have been held up with a lot of tangiential questions no doubt (is ‘tangiential’ a word?) .
The Pennsylvania Hotel is where it was held and, quite frankly, that place is a rathole. At $229 a night I guess it’s not one of the more expensive NYC hotels, particularly considering it’s convenient location across the street from Madison Square Garden, and only a short walk to Times Square. That area of the city is non-stop CROWDED! I was amazed at the crowds on the streets on Sunday night as I drove in. The hotel itself was poorly maintained, the wired in-room internet was down all night, and I didn’t have wi-fi with me : (
9 hours straight in a not-so-comfortable chair listening to straight lecture was a pill I was willing to swallow and am glad I did. Did I get any revelations? No. Did I learn a lot of new things? Honestly, no. I had a couple of questions about the new DisplayObjects and Container system in AS3, and feel more comfortable in that. I also got some more insight into the MVC patten and how Moock uses it. But probably the most valuable things I took away were:
- Colin stated up front the following: “If it works, it’s *right*.” In other words, he said do what you need to do to make the client happy and that may mean not doing OOP or making things perfect from a pure development perspective. This is something that I have struggled with through the years now. I get so hung up in trying to put together things the best way possible as if my code is going to be put on review for the experts of the world to review and criticize.
- Even Colin himself doesn’t have all the answers. There were a number of times he had to test something before responding to a question.
- Managing state in an application using constants (static vars). I hadn’t considered that before.
There was lots of other things learned for sure. It was well worth the hassle of the drive, the hotel, etc. It would have helped if I had made it through more than just 1/3rd of his book before attending as the 9 hour lecture is basically a recap of the ‘Virtual Pet’ app that is constructed throughout his book.