Several times within the last week or so I’ve been asked what I use for the majority of my development and if I have any secret tips on applications that aid in my efforts and productivity.

The simple answer… no.

I have a tendency to choose standards and common practice over popular, hyped applications and utilities.

This is just a few notes on some of the most used applications on my primary development machine. Oh — and it’s a Mac.

Flex & AIR

Flex 3 development is of course as you can imagine done in Flex Builder 3. For the past month or so I’ve been using Eclipse 3.4 along with Adobe’s Flex Builder plugin. I’ve bounced back and forth between the Flex Builder plugin and the stand-along Flex Builder app, but found that the latest release of Eclipse along with the plugin work and play nicely together and are relatively stable.

One note I might mention — the few times that I have installed Eclipse 3.4 along with the Flex Builder plugin I have had to customize my perspective to include the launch and debug buttons for Flex. This wasn’t an issue in previous versions and isn’t really a big issue at all, but for new users, this could be confusing.

Flex 4 development is done in the stand-alone Flash Builder 4 beta. I chose this route only as a simple and quick method of having both tools available without worrying about interference between the two. Not to imply that there is, I just had better things to do at the time than risk an issue. No other reason.

Java

Eclipse 3.4 is the Java IDE of choice. This shouldn’t be any surprise if you are a Java developer.

Nothing more to see here.

Cocoa / Objective-C 2.0

Well, unless you are a complete masochist, then you of course already know that this is done in Xcode. If you are not yet an Xcode user, then you can’t imagine what you are missing. It’s an excellent multi-language IDE and makes quick work of Cocoa applications. Although it does support a wide range of compiled and interpreted languages, it’s pretty much only used for Cocoa on my machines and most recently of course, iPhone app development.

PHP / PERL / Ruby  & Python

All of my scripting development is done using Coda by Panic. It’s a great light-weight, multi-language development environment that uses the latest and greatest features of OS X to make endless hours of scripting more enjoyable.

It is missing a feature or two that I wouldn’t mind having (such as local function / method code hinting), but ultimately it’s not a deal breaker. I’ve easily logged a few million lines of code through Coda.

MySQL

I’m more of a purist here and have a tendency to do all of my MySQL jockeying through the command line. However, recently I’ve began using Sequel Pro for OS X and although it is lacking in a few areas, it does make it nice and convenient to quickly create and modify table column types as well as backup databases and tables to the local disk.

Backup

I do get asked quite a bit about backup policies, and of course it is mostly by clients. For backup on all of my development machines I use externally connected 1 terabyte drives and use Time Machine. Time Machine with OS X takes hourly snapshots of changes and automates the management of the data so I can focus on more important things. — I like that.

~moses

Half empty. Time for a refill!

Within the last 10 days or so, I’ve been able to wrap up several small Adobe Flex and AIR projects and now have some availability for some interesting and / or unique opportunities. Let’s hear em’.

Regarding the Flex / AIR sector in general; I am still absolutely amazed at the shear number of Flex and AIR projects that are in search of developers for both consulting and long-term contract work. Although I pass on dedicated contract work, any new or experienced Flex developer has a near unending supply of opportunity to harvest from it seems.

Unique, technical or interesting projects of any type are of course a preference, however I also enjoy cranking out small or quick one-off solutions.

As I said above, let’s hear what you got!

~moses

It exists and functions identically to the web based Flex app, because it is simply a compiler change that enables us to provide the desktop version.

The primary benefits of running the Aanval console as a desktop application is the opportunity to break away from the browser and its issues, along with overall performance enhancements.

We designed Aanval 4 with this capability in mind, but have been waiting for the right time and maturity of the back end to release it.

Sometime around the release of Aanval 5, we will be providing this as a download.

Stay tuned.

For quite some time now; the phone and email box have been very much alive and thriving with requests for Flex and AIR consulting engagements.

I am not at all surprised, as the technology speaks for itself — but clearly there is professional service work to be done.

More and more as Flex emerges from the depths of its niche following, organizations are becoming more aware of the impact it may have on their core business, employees, customers and clients.

An important task for those of us who promote the use of Flex (when it fits), is to ensure that our clients understand the full range of its benefits.

Rich Internet Applications (“RIA”)’s, Mashups, and Web Services are only a small selection of the capabilities. One of the strengths that I see clients most interested in, is the core business components of Flex such as the datagrid and wide selection of other listing components.

Even the viewstack, strange enough seems to be of large interest. Not to mention desktop applications by way of AIR.

Recently a colleague of mine called me a princess, yes a princess for refusing to build new projects in older languages. Being so finicky may make me a princess, but I prefer to spend my hours developing in a cutting edge language, creating state of the art applications any day.

Google is releasing a Beta version of a new browser called ‘Chrome’ that is to _eventually_ become a cross platform Internet application browser. Mac and linux versions are expected at a later date.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

This will be quite interesting to see how this is received by the industry.

Speculating here; But I would not be surprised if this is more of a cross platform runtime and less of a browser. I say this only because one of their features is a browserless window in which web applications can run.

If this is more accurate, then this might be Google’s entry into the RIA world and a pathway for them to compete with Flex and AIR.

– oh, I guess this did have to do with Flex.

Specialized Rich Internet Application Development – Adobe Flex, Adobe Air, PHP, MySQL / SQLite, Linux, Unix

More than 10+ years of development in desktop, Internet centric and network based applications.

Below is a small selection of expertise:

Objective-C / 2.0, C/C++, AS3, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Javascript, XML, HTML, TCP/IP, SQL, Linux, Unix, Windows, OS X

Visit the Tactical FLEX website and call for research and / or professional services inquiries.

http://www.tacticalflex.com/

Tags: Flex Developer, Flex Consulting, Flex Professional Services, Flex Outsourcing