FlashBrighton: Processing.js with Brendan Dawes August 18, 2009

Brendan Dawes woke with a start.

He was troubled, a man with a past. He'd been working with 'Flash' for years now, he'd been at it so long he wasn't even sure what version he started with anymore. The past was hazy, as if the city rain has washed it clean from the streets. Once the whole neighborhood was crawling with Flash, so much so that you never even noticed it. 'Ubiquitous', that's what it was. The word came back to him like a bad hangover. His moles at Adobe used to use it all the time, like the sons of bitches were on commission or something.

But the game was changing, see. There were new faces on the street, smart kids, straight outta Cali. The whole goddam district had become overrun with 'iPhones' and Flash was shrinking back into the shadows. How could Dawes compete with these nerdy lowlifes? He reached for his loaded AS3. It felt cool and heavy in his hand, reassuring, but the iPhones were freebasing on C, real strong shit. How was he gonna keep pace?

'Processing.js' he thought, 'maybe that's the answer'. The New York Times had run an article on it, apparently it was 'an open programming language to run animation and interactions without using Flash or Java'. Dawes had tried it a few times and, he had to admit, it was pretty powerful. But was it a credible alternative to creating 'ubiquitous' interactive experiences?

He booted up his mainframe. 'Maybe I've read too much Bill Burroughs, but I reckon Tuesday 18th August, 7pm, at the Werks in Hove oughta do it, try this baby out'.

He put the AS3 back down on the desk and went back to bed. An iPhone glimmered briefly in the window, then vanished.