Mikko Haapoja
Q: Please tell us a bit about yourself.
My name is Mikko Haapoja. I was born in Toronto in 1983. Soon after that we moved to Finland for a few years, and went back forth for awhile between Canada and Finland until my family settled in Toronto again. Which is where I live now with my wife Jenny. My first computer was an Amiga 500 in the 1990’s but I didn’t do any coding until high school when we were forced to learn Turing. I didn’t like coding too much at that point, but then not knowing what to do after High School I headed to college for Computer Programming and Analysis.
Q: How would you describe a day in your shoes?
Wake up, eat some breakfast, hurry into the shower after Jenny is out, drop Jenny off at work (she’s a teacher), and then head to Jam3 to start work.
At work I start the day out by reading my emails, tweets, and blogs. Then I sit there and just write cool stuff (at least in my oppinion) for the rest of the day.
After work I hang out with friends, go skating, go sauna, go work out or do some more coding just for fun.
Q: How long have you been using Flash/Flex?
Well I used to skate a lot and make video edits of my friends skating and stuff. To get that extra “BAM” factor for my edit’s I started doing some small animations in Flash 5. Just tweening stuff and then exporting those animations as AVI and popping them into my edits.
When I was in college learning some heavy duty programming languages I started goofing around with Actionscript since I was somewhat familiar with Flash already.
After college I felt a bit burnt out (finished my four year program in two and a half years) and really just wanted to do web development and mostly Flash development, cause I figured it was easier and gave you that instant gratification a lot of languages don’t give.
Q: What is it about Flash/Flex that you like the most? What would you change?
The thing I like about Flash is that it does give you that instant gratifaction. You code something and you see it on your screen. Even though Actionscript has gotten more complicated over the years, especially with v. 3.0, it’s still quite simple to do almost anything.
I really wouldn’t change anything when it comes to features that the Flash player has. I feel at the speed that the player is developing at it’s already getting tougher to keep up with all the awesome features. If there is one thing that I would change it would be the small inconcistencies that come with the different versions of the plugin. (but there aren’t too many of them anyways)
Q: What was the most challenging thing you ever did using actionscript or an actionscript based library/framework?
It’s really hard to say the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on. Every project is different in nature. A project could be quite simple but because of timelines it could actually turn into a complicated project.
I would have to say some of my personal projects have been most demanding and I guess the projects I’ve sort of given up on are the most complicated.
One example would be at some point I had the bright idea of taking 3d tracking data from Icarus (a free 3d video tracking app) and pushing that data into papervision to try to seamlessly composite Papervision 3d with live footage in real time. Needless to say I didn’t get super far and then I heard that Ralph Hauwert had done something like this already so I gave up since I got swamped with other things anyways.
I should maybe look into that project again at some point even though Ralph has already done it.
Q: What suggestions or sources of inspiration/motivation would you like to share with up and coming Developers?
I think as a suggestion for new developers I would say to stay humble. You possibly could be doing the coolest stuff ever but you’ll always learn more by being humble and not thinking that you’re better than you are. I’ve gone back to the most basic tutorials and learned something new.
I would say for inspiration read blogs and tweets. When you see a blog that is even remotely cool throw it into your rss reader. Look at other peoples work and be in awe, but then try to figure out how they did it. Never think that you can’t do something because eventually you will be able to do it. Also pay attention to motiongraphics and other art forms there’s a lot of inspiration there.
