Page 1 of 1

Flash and PHP not Flash VS PHP

Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:05 pm
by crenshaw
Experienced Members,

Do you have time to give your opinion and rationale on Flash and PHP. I was listening to a student at one of our local colleges tout the wonders of Flash. Many of the things he said everyone already knew but his point I know was to grind an ax. When he got to the topic of job searches he made the statement that PHP is dying and Flash is the only way to go if you are going to be looking for employment.

His fellow classmates did let him know that without HTML it is impossible to put Flash on the internet and the PHP like other programming languages for the web, allows Flash to communicate with the server. They raked him for the next 3 class sessions in their own way.

Can I ask for your insight so the class can resume on a natural course and so this kid does not go into the work world with the wrong ideas.

His ax to grind started because he did not want anyone to know that he was unfamiliar with a term or process know as FTP. From what I am told if you consider yourself a developer for the web that is the first thing you need to know. Is this true? Will someone who does not know how to FTP be able to be hired in today's market?

Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:09 pm
by feyd
It can depend on the environment you work in. For instance, if I worked at a company that had developed their own IDE they could have it do all the uploading or storing of code for me. In that instance, I wouldn't need to know a thing about FTP. Now, most companies don't have IDEs that do all the grunt work for them, so to be marketable to the majority of the industry, FTP knowledge is definitely a starting point. You don't have to know everything about it, but enough to do the basics.

As for Flash being the future, that was touted long ago when Flash was first coming out. Has it come to pass? No. Will it? Not for a while. Why? There are a number of factors here. Implementations across all platforms for players is dodgy at best (especially those on Linux variants.) It eats a lot of resources and processing time in many. Lots and lots of people find them fair annoying and as far as I know, support for the disabled and disability standards is less than that of HTML, which is horrible in a lot of sites. So really, until it's not possible to write incompatible, nonstandard, inaccessible work for the majority of people out there (a huge number) it likely won't happen.

Re: Flash and PHP not Flash VS PHP

Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:03 pm
by Roja
crenshaw wrote:Do you have time to give your opinion and rationale on Flash and PHP.
I have a very clear opinion and methodology about technologies and tools for my career. I will research, learn, and embrace *any* tool that allows me to accomplish tasks I've been asked to do.

Now, in the research and learning phase, I may learn (substantial) reasons not to use that tool. I may find the licensing unacceptable. I may find the security or accessibility issues unacceptable. I may even find that I really dislike working on it, and discount it as flat out too obnoxious to use.

But I don't rule out a tool without learning about it. Frontpage is a great example. Its almost universally sneered at by most experienced users. However, when configured properly, it is fantastically capable, and has a very well designed interace. I wouldn't have learned that if I didn't spend over a year suffering through its shortcomings.

So, with that said, I spent some time with Flash. I found it *extremely* inaccessible (that has improved slightly since then), fairly difficult to work with, and completely unacceptable in implementation. That said, I wouldn't say NO, I will not ever use it. I would advise strongly against its use in all but the rarest of situations, and even then, I'd see if someone else on the team could do it.
crenshaw wrote:When he got to the topic of job searches he made the statement that PHP is dying and Flash is the only way to go if you are going to be looking for employment.
Easy enough to test. Load up monster, search for Flash, and search for PHP. Compare the count of jobs, and the salary.

I'll save you some trouble - PHP pays more.
crenshaw wrote:His fellow classmates did let him know that without HTML it is impossible to put Flash on the internet and the PHP like other programming languages for the web, allows Flash to communicate with the server.
To a degree thats true, but it is fairly stand alone. Thats not quite a fair argument. You can in fact make standalone flash files. The web just happens to be a nice place to include/display them.
crenshaw wrote:His ax to grind started because he did not want anyone to know that he was unfamiliar with a term or process know as FTP. From what I am told if you consider yourself a developer for the web that is the first thing you need to know. Is this true? Will someone who does not know how to FTP be able to be hired in today's market?
I wouldnt say UNABLE. I would say extremely unlikely.

However, anyone that cannot say "I don't know" isn't suitable for technology work, period. If you can't say you don't know, you'll end up lying, or attempting to hide it - as apparently the speaker did.

Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:06 pm
by neophyte
Why did he say PHP was dying.

Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:52 am
by onion2k
Operating systems are starting to get vector engines built in at the graphics layer (OSX already has, Windows Vista is getting Sparkle) .. Knowing Flash will give you an easy way to tap into that in about 3 years time. The guy is daft if he thinks PHP is dying* but he's bang on saying that knowledge of Flash will make you very employable in the future.



* In my opinion, with the right marketing and a bit of luck Ruby could take a lot of market share away from PHP.. possibly even replace it as the dominant language for web development. PHP could "die". It's not impossible.

Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:18 am
by phpdevuk
flash is ace, but it does not meet the standards for accessiblity which many websites are having to adhere to these days, they've made efforts to improve this, but I still think it is no anywhere close yet. As for flash from a developers view, I still have fond memories of being given a partially developed flash game by a client that had like 4000 lines of top down code embeded in it, I still wake up in cold sweat to this day ;)