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The motto 'Code at the Speed of Thought' was not chosen lightly. Once you are 'in the groove' with a PureMVC app, you can really blaze.
However, it's all about getting into that groove. If you're not there yet, it can be a little like standing outside the stadium with no ticket, listening to the band starting to jam in a thumpy, unintelligible and closed-off-from-you sort of way.
So, since the release of the framework, I've been working hard trying to close the gap in terms of documentation.
Going through the exercise of writing PureMVC Implementation Idioms and Best Practices did wonders to focus me in terms of the articulating what should go where in a PureMVC app. That combined with the code to CodePeek, and now the Cairngorm CafeTownsend port done by Michael Ramirez, and one can get up to speed on this pretty quickly. If sufficiently motivated. Believe me, folks, I know it needs to be easier to learn these things.
That's why I'm currently working on a PureMVC Architecture 101 Course, and will soon be looking for interested participants in the process of testing and evaluating the overall courseware structure and effectiveness.
I've delivered extemporaneous multi-day training on Cairngorm, and I've been teaching Flex as an Adobe/Macromedia Certified Instructor since 1.5, and have had a lot of time to observe and think about courseware content, layout and delivery.
I've also felt that the thing that is missing after teaching a week of F2RCA and F2DC or F2BDA is architecture.
Students come out of these classes, very well acquainted what Flex can do, and ready to build, but without a lot of direction in terms of architecture. I usually point people to the best design pattern books and sites that I know and offer to help with architecture if they need it.
But I think they'd be better served to have their top folks on the project sit through at least a 2 or 3 day structured architecture course in addition to the more development focused courses.
Recently while pondering next steps with PureMVC, I realized that courseware was the best way to proceed. I feel we need simpler examples, and a bunch of 'Hello World's are great for bite-sized granularity, but won't really give you the big picture unless they fall within some ordered context.
Fortunately, in Implementation Idioms I had already worked out a logical way of unfolding the PureMVC design, but was entirely narrative.
With Architecture 101 the overall structure is similar, except there is much less narrative and much more hands on. Units cover the major actors in the applications you will write. There is some preamble to frame the Unit, but quickly it moves to the Labs, each of which has several learning points to be taken away and we set about absorbing them in the Steps for the Lab.
The courseware has a Lab project which you are modifying and a Solution project that you can refer to if you get stuck, though the Student Manual summarizes changes clearly and often.
If this sounds to you like a good way to learn PureMVC, and you'd like to get a first look at it when it is ready for testing, send me an email.
For businesses, FutureScale will also be offering PureMVC Architecture 101 as onsite instructor-led training in addition to the already available Adobe Flex training.
You can have a look at the Architecture 101 demo on the site, and download the source code. -=Cliff> |
