June 17, 2005
Welcome To My Blog
Hello, and welcome to my blog! I'm not sure exactly what I'll be writing about, but with the project I've been working on for the past 7 months recently announced, I felt compelled to finally start one. Of course, it has taken me almost a week to get my blog up and running - more on that in future blog entries...
I joined Macromedia around 9 months ago, and run the recently announced project code-named "Zorn" with Sho Kuwamoto. My prime motivation for joining Macromedia was that I saw incredible things being done in Flash that just blew me away, but every time I picked it up, my eyes would glaze over. Within this dichotomy I saw a tremendous opportunity to help make building these rich internet apps easier for people like me.
So Zorn is the new development tool that we're building to make it easier to build apps that run on the Flash Platform. Zorn is built on Eclipse and I think will help make Flash more approachable for developers. I've got to say that as I typed that last sentence, I almost had to laugh. Developers, especially really good ones, are usually the type of people who don't need things to be made more approachable - their whole reason for being is to figure out the hard stuff! Yet it's amazing how many great developers I've met who can't figure out how to do anything in Flash and just give up. The problem is that the Flash model, while very intuitive for animators and designers, is just completely foreign to experienced developers. Timelines? Movieclips? Layers with code? Huh? I'll be talking more about how we will address these issues in the months ahead.
Prior to joining Macromedia, I spent 10 years at Microsoft. During that time, I co-founded the ASP.NET team with Scott Guthrie in 1998, and led the development of both ASP.NET and the .NET Framework for the 1.0 and 1.1 releases. One of the things that I really enjoyed about my time on NET was that the technology I was working on really helped developers build things more easily than they were able to before. I think that Zorn and the Flex framework, which is the underlying programming model that Zorn targets, will do similar things for developers looking to create rich internet applications.
Apart from work, I live in San Francisco with my wife Rosemary and our two pet Parrots, Kiku and Tank, and enjoy playing the guitar and photography.
Posted by Mark Anders at June 17, 2005 02:54 PM
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Comments
Hi Marc, I look forward to what you have to put here in the coming months. Oh, and don't forget, there are thousands of developers who already find Flash very approachable. Unfortunately, we're known as "Flash Developers" and aren't taken very seriously by "Real Developers" ;)
Posted by: Keith Peters at June 17, 2005 04:44 PM
Welcome to the blog scene!
Posted by: Ryan Guill at June 17, 2005 04:50 PM
Keith, I should have tried to be more specific. Flash is an excellent tool and there is a class of developers who understand it, like it and do amazing things with it! There are a bunch of other people who come from a more traditional GUI or web background and many of them have trouble with Flash. One of the important things to note about Zorn is that it does not replace Flash. It's for a different audience. Thanks for your comment! Btw, it's Mark with a k! :-)
Posted by: Mark Anders at June 17, 2005 05:10 PM
Hi Mark,
nice to meet you and for joining mxna.
Keep us updated :)
Posted by: Marco Casario at June 17, 2005 06:08 PM
Welcome to Blogging world. I am sure, your blog going to be interesting...
I already bloglined it...
-abdul
Posted by: Abdul Qabiz at June 21, 2005 02:23 AM
Nit: shouldn't there be an 's' after the apostrophe in the title?
Posted by: Manish Jethani at June 21, 2005 03:55 PM
Actually the 's is optional for nouns ending in s. Here's a link http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/grammar/course/punctuation/3_7.htm
Posted by: Mark Anders at June 21, 2005 10:26 PM
Good to see you in the blog world. I was just trying to see if you had a blog the other day :). Looking forward to Zorn
Posted by: Chafic Kazoun at June 26, 2005 09:01 AM
Cant wait for it.
Have been bouncing between MVS.NET 2003 and flash Ide for a while now and Have been getting piss*d off with both. Lol please find that magical middle land where flash developers will be happy and SOurce safe will be a nasty word.
But really well done on a great idea and initiative, and if you need a coffee boy give us a yell.
C.
Posted by: Campbell Anderson at July 11, 2005 10:25 PM