Thursday, July 22, 2010

Yes We Candroid

In case anyone's wondering when the next Flex CodeDependent video/demo is coming, the answer is... probably not anytime soon.
After a fun and productive Flex 4 release, I decided to get small; the time had come for me to do some mobile development. In particular, I wanted to work on Android. So a few weeks ago, I joined Google to work on the Android SDK. For starters, I'm working on animation support (surprise, surprise), but I'm sure I'll end up tinkering throughout the UI toolkit and graphics layers. You know, the fun stuff.
By the way, if you want to know more about this personal career decision, I'll try to answer all of your possible questions here, in no particular order:
  • Flex is awesome, Flex 4 is even better. Honestly, I wouldn't have wasted the last year's worth of weekends and evenings writing Flex 4 Fun if I wasn't totally jazzed about Flex 4 as a great client platform.
  • Yes, but only on Tuesdays.
  • The coffee is better.
  • Of course the comedy at chetchat.blogspot.com will continue! I'm not dead yet!
  • No
  • Maybe, eventually
  • Blue
  • Dental floss
Adobe's doing great things with Flash on Android and Flex on Android. But that's not what I'm doing here at Google, so I won't be posting much new Flex/Flash content here (although I still plan on doing some book-related articles and conference/user-group presentations). It's that finite-time thing - I'm going to be pretty busy just working on what I need to do for Android. I don't know if you've heard, but there's a lot of these devices out there these days; that's a lot of users that need even more awesome UI toolkit software...
For anyone interested in Android development, or in UI/graphics/animation development in general, stay tuned to this blog: I plan to post content here about all of that kind of stuff.

13 comments:

pelegri said...

Have fun at Google! The Sun diaspora continues to spread...

Tina in Boston said...

Congrats! Will miss all your Adobe stuff. Can we still send you questions on Flex?

Chet Haase said...

@CrimsonBruin: Well, you're free to send questions, but that's not the same as getting an answer back. Think of it a bit like prayer. I'll frankly be pretty soaked coming up to speed and jamming on Android to have extra brain cells for Flex questions.
I think you're better served posting questions to Flex forums (which was always the case anyway...).

Carl said...

Awesome to hear. Android animation could use some love, thats for sure.

eestes said...

Looking forward to your posts. Understanding UI and animation frameworks in Android is something I've wanted to study more. I hope to see a bit more WebOS-style polish in the next Android release.

Alexis MP said...

Sounds like a band betting back together (for the better of course)! Congratulations!

Babatunde Adeyemi said...

Happy for you Chet, and pls regards to Romain Guy

Chet Haase said...

@Alexis: Indeed, it's like coming home (if my house were filled with thousands of programmers).
In fact, programming in the Java language on an animation framework on a UI team with Romain - it's like I never left.
@Others: thanks for the wishes. Now, back to work...

Dennis G, said...

While there, tell them to speed up the process of opening the android market to everyone. Being an android developer really sucks when you aren't part of the special nine..

Mohamed Mansour said...

Congratulations, yay Chet and Romain saga will be entertaing to watch. Do I smell a new book in the near future :)

Francisc said...

Sad news for me. I guess your Adobe TV Show will also come to an end. Well, all good things must.

Good luck and have fun!

Dave said...

Good luck at Google. I'm looking forward to seeing what Filthy Rich android client apps appear in the future.

Glenn Williams said...

Even though Im a bit late posting, I've only just heard about you moving to google.

Just want to say thanks for all the great work you put into Flex sdk and to say I hope you enjoy the same success at google.

I was sorry to hear you're no longer working on flex, but im looking forward to seeing what you're input into Android takes it.

Thanks again and all the best.

glenn
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