MountAbbey

The 37signal founders Jason and David have written a book that anyone wanting to be more productive at work ought to read. It tells us what we may already know. It makes us question the things we’ve been taught. And I think everyone will come away  wanting to tear out a few pages to give to their boss (or board of directors if you are the boss) and a few pages to give to their peers and many pages to post around their office space.

So instead of trying to be witty, here are a few of the chapter headings that sunk in with me. Ordering a copy of the book now and I’ll use a few of these for future discussions.

For me:

• Learning from mistakes is overrated
• Start making something
• Don’t be a hero

For my next boss (and me):

• Planning is guessing
• Start a business not a startup
• Start at the epicenter & Launch Now
• Say no by default & Don’t confuse enthusiasm with priority
• Send people home at 5 (even if you have to kick me out)

For my peers (and me):

• Make a dent in the universe
• Focus on what won’t change
• Good enough is fine
• Four-letter words: need, must, can’t, easy, just, only, fast. ASAP is poison.

For all those people thought would like to dream big (and me):

• Interruption is the enemy of productivity
• Pour yourself into your product
• Emulate chefs – write a cookbook and share

For people that might fear hiring me:

• The best are everywhere. “It’s crazy not to hire the best people just because they live far away.”

The author Gary Resonzweig has written lots and lots of Flash games. I won the book as a raffle prize at the Indie MMO Conference in March. My other choices were OpenGL books. I figured I’d end up loaning it to the designers at work. The book has a website — FlashGameU.com — with sample code and a community. That’s a great addition.

The book talks about fundamentals and walks the reader through 14 different games. The author makes great suggestions on ways to extend and improve the games. I learned a little bit in each of the games, mostly about AS3. I’d have done some of the coding differently but not so much that I consider anything wrong.

This book is essential for anyone trying to write games in Flash and AS3. It is easy to understand, has a logical progression, and includes game types you’ll want to extend. It is a good addition to my library even though I expect I won’t use it much.

The author Colin Moock is a name known to almost every ActionScript programmer. I haven’t read his other book(s) — “ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide” — which seems to be more about interacting with Flash objects and is next on my list. I have also browsed Moock.org quite a bit and early on it seemed like his site had a sample anytime you need to work around an issue with one of the many ActionScript quirks. So sometimes a book is worth its price just for insight into an author and respected member of the community.

“Essential ActionScript” goes well beyond that. The book is probably best for someone with either understanding of ActionScript (any of the earlier variations) or another object oriented programming (OOP) language and is trying to make the transition to Flash. I think the real strength of the book are best practices discussed and demonstrated. On the other hand, I think I was ready for a ten page summary of the differences between AS 1.0. Sometimes Moock likes to write.

I haven’t read his chapters on Design Patterns yet because it seems the wrong book to talk about them. Sometimes “Essential ActionScript” felt like an introduction to OOP also. Great for the technical artist moving from AS 1.0 but unnecessary for me. I will get to it sometime — but I feel like I have a couple of projects to conquer first.

Another potential problem with the book is that it was written before the Flash 8 update in October 2005 and so a couple of the best practices have changed. Overall though, I’m happy I added this book to my ActionScript library. On the other hand, the same information could probably be presented in a faster manner. Remind me to start writing the book “From C++ to AS 2.0”.