Bartek Drozdz
Mod Master Flex
Q: Please tell us a bit about yourself.
I am 32 (actually 33, but it’s not official yet..) I come from Poland, currently live in Stockholm in Sweden. I travel a lot, because somehow my family is spread all over Europe.I used to work as Flash Developer for different interactive agencies, most recently for FI (www.f-i.com). Since last year I am a freelancer and I work with clients from different places all over the world.
Q: How would you describe a day in your shoes?
I can’t really say that there is a typical day for me. Sometimes I wake up at 7AM, sometimes at 10. I usually kick off with a coffee and Google Reader. If I have a project going on I focus on it, and if not I try to find something interesting to experiment with. Lately I became addicted to Twitter, so everyday I spend some time reading and writing tweets. I try to close the computer before midnight.
Q: How long have you been using Flash/Flex?
My first contact with Flash dates back to Flash 3. It must have been 1999. I started to use it for work probably a year later. Somewhere between Flash 6 and 7 I took a detour and started developing Java
applications. I got back to Flash in 2005, to find out that ActionScript has evolved a lot and was getting close to Java itself. Since then I focused 100% on Flash development, first with AS2, then AS3. My weapon of choice used to be the Flash IDE and nowadays I use FDT.
Q: What is it about Flash/Flex that you like the most? What would you change?
I like Actionscript 3. It is a language that evolved from something not too serious into a robust programming environment. I wrote something in AS3 almost everyday for the last 18 months and there isn’t one major feature that I don’t like, or something important that I miss in the language itself.
What would I change? I want more speed! Performance increase is probably what every Flash developer would like to see, especially if you had anything to do with 3D. Any software has its limits, and those limits stimulate creativity, but I’d love to see those limits raised a little bit in Flash 
Q: What was the most challenging thing you ever did using actionscript or an actionscript based library/framework?
I discovered Papervision3D one year ago. Since then, everything I did with actionscript was a challenge – whether it was a demo for the blog, a open-source development or a commercial project. I always look for things with the “impossible” factor – something that I feel is beyond my possibilities at the moment.
Certainly an important milestone was my first commercial project that involved 3D – the Skateit demo for EA (http://www.everydayflash.com/blog/index.php/2008/12/16/paperskate3d-ea-skateit/). When I first eveloped it, originally as an entry for a Pepervision3D contest, I was not familiar with any 3D modelling tool, so I decided to create the whole thing in AS – the skateboard model is composed entirely of plane and cube primitives.
Q: What suggestions or sources of inspiration/motivation would you like to share with up and coming Developers?
Read blogs, learn and experiment. The most dangerous thing I our profession is when you start doing the same thing every day. Routine kills creativity. So whenever you get this feeling, look around and try to learn something new. No matter whether it’s math, physics, design patterns or something else – whatever turns you on. Also, try other technologies. The fact that I learned Java in the past was very very helpful to me when AS3 came in. Today, there are multiple technologies which can be a good source of inspiration for Flash like Processing or iPhone development. Never let boredom get you!
