Thoughts On Media Programming Languages

I've been preoccupied lately. You see, I've been trying to see if I could develop applications in Flash the same way I do in Java. That is to say, I wanted to be able to build complete Flash programs from simple text files, without using fancy GUIs. I wanted to see how flexible Flash really was.

You see, Flash is great for a few things, most notably for making web commercials and prototyping user interfaces. But what most people don't realize, is that Flash is a very powerful media programming language. Want to write a program that plays three mp3s at once set to nine simultaneously playing video clips? What about a program that 'samples' video clips to let you create new videos from pieces of old ones? Well, I've put a lot of work into similar programs in Java and C++ and it's not easy, but for Flash, these kinds of things are child's play.

So, as a future computing researcher, I hoped I could use flash to build some crazy interfaces I've been wanting to play with. The trick, though, was to determine if I could develop in Flash the way I do in Java and C++. Specifically, I wanted to be able to create 'classes' or 'objects' that were general and reusable, and most importantly, I wanted to deal with text files; not GUI editors.

Well, this week I've figured it all out! I've created a template for building applications in Flash that mirrors building media applications in Java. Sweet. I've written two applications, starting both with only a blank text editor; one is a dynamic slideshow application (complete with cross-fades and panning and zooming), and the other is a dynamic mp3 player. Both applications are impressively short in terms of lines of code (< 50). Even better, the language allows the simple elegance of the program's design to show through. (It would be obfuscated if written in Java.)

It's times like this I wish I had my computers and websites online so I could post that code. Anyway, these 'modules' will go into an Electronic Press Kit I'm building for my friend, the Jazz Singer.

In other events, I started creating a post called "12 Genders," but what I thought would be a few paragraphs has turned into a 16 (!) page paper, and I'm still writing. I'm now up to 192 genders. I guess I have a lot to say about that subject, huh?

Well... stay tuned!