I was at Flex User Group meeting in Bangalore. The room was full of developers, designers and managers interested in Adobe Flash Platform (Flex/Flash/AIR). I was, quietly, noticing things while various thoughts were going on in my mind.
I have been part of Flash (Platform) ecosystem for around nine years now. I remember old days of were-here, flashkit, flashcoders, flashcomm, flashlounge, indiammug, etc. I got to know some of great guys, who have inspired me in many ways.
I have seen Flash Platform evolving and probably know reasons why certain things (Royale – Flex, Central, etc) happened. It’s great to see, how businesses and developers/designers are embracing Flash Platform today. It’s great feeling that I belong to the batch who is among the oldest in my country and probably, this planet.
Those old days were fun, good to be among creative guys with amazing programming skills. We saw some great stuff (3d, chat, games, funky effects, nice apps, forms, etc) with limited capabilities of Flash 4.
It was amazing feeling, when I saw Flash 5 beta in Macromedia seminar in year 2000. I could see the expressions (wow) on everyone’s face and the excitement after seeing something – Flash 5 (amazing tool, ActionScript 1.0, XMLSocket, XML, Objects, etc).
Today is a big day, I am again witnessing something (AIR 1.0 release). I am equally excited, as I was during Flash 5 release. Honestly, I was more excited then because things were not that open, you would get to know about a product’s next version during some event or leaked information from few beta-testers, unlike today where prerelease cycles allows us to play with product/tool even before it’s released. But you get this feeling, you are part of product development, which was not there (for everyone).
I am sure, when I would look back after some years, I would feel more proud and happy for being part of an ecosystem and this community. I believe, success of Flash, Flex and AIR is result of the beliefs of thousands of developers and designers, who were always passionately involved, even in various up-down times. Times when your identity as a developer was questioned, because you were working with Flash, but hey who cares about what someone says, if you are in love with something.
It was hard to get a project or job with this skill-set, at-least in India. Even today, many companies are blind enough not to see how cool Flash Platfom is, but it’s lot easier now to convince them compared to what it used to be then.
Many religious and emotional developers, like me, who would fight or do anything to prove that Flash (meant: SWF, Player, ActionScript or technology in general) is the best. I have grown up now, probably different phase of life, I focus on products, ideas, users more now, but I am still in love with ActionScript and Flash Player.
Thanks to Macromedia/Adobe for listening and interacting us (developers/designers) in all possible ways (blogs, forums, mailing-lists, etc).
An old link (http://macromedia.com/into) still works. People talking about how Flash changed their lives, I am also somewhere in there 
