I'm an actionscript programmer living and working in a tiny village in the Yorkshire Dales, UK. I used to be a TV reporter, but my inner (and often outer) geek won. I also write stuff. Most recently Head First 2D Geometry.
March 19th-23rd: try{harder} Level Up is a conference with a difference:
5 days, 4 nights.
8 try{harder} mentors who took part in the original try{harder} and want to share it with…
8 new try{harder} participants who want to level-up.
Everybody teaches, everybody learns.
When you build an application or utility you are shaping a challenge for all the developers who ever interact with this code. For the rest of your team, for the future developers who maintain and extend the codebase, and for yourself – today, tomorrow, two years from now when you have no recollection of the code.
The challenge is akin to playing a game – and many of the rules of good game design apply just as well to your code base as the product of your compiled application.
A golden rule: ‘Guess what I’m thinking’ is not a fun game
But it is! I can hear some of you shouting. What about 20 Questions! What about ISpy! Yes, ok, they can be fun, given certain conditions: ISpy requires a small enough possibility space. It’s more fun in a car than a supermarket. 20 Questions (a beautiful binary search of the whole universe!) relies upon having an agent that can accurately tell you which pile of hay your needle resides in.
Without those constraints, ‘Guess what I’m thinking’ is just frustrating.
This was my first ever industry conference – what a shame I waited so long!
I only stayed a day and a half – partly logistics and partly that, being autistic, I find these situations very demanding and I wasn’t sure how much I could absorb before my brain started playing up. I think I found just the right balance for a first-time, but would definitely stay for the whole conference in future.
My only regret is that I was too shy to interact with many of the other speakers. Conrad Winchester is a god send! And Seb Lee-Delisle is a really, really, really sweet person who I instantly felt relaxed with. But I should have pushed myself to talk more with some folk – though partly I was just valuing the interactions I was having with smart people around Robotlegs and so on.
I was totally blown away by Flash on the Beach. What a lot of smart, interesting people!
My full slides will follow tomorrow. I’m going to release a flick-through version that includes extra text, and a screen-cast version with voice. Thanks to everybody who made my first FOTB experience so rewarding – I’m very glad that I got out of my comfort zone and did it.
For now – a little something for the lovely people who attended my presentation on “Robotlegs 2 and your brain” – that vital missing ‘man brain’ entry file.
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