Aviary invites

I've got 5 aviary invites to give away.

Let me know if you're interested.

What if Sam releases Saffron?

I've been asked the question "What happens to Identity if Sam releases Saffron?" a couple of times recently, so I thought it might be a good idea to address it here, as I'm sure more people are wondering it.

The answer is that I don't know (mostly because it won't be up to me). At the moment Sam's website continues to be offline, and all anybody 'knows' about Saffron UML is based on a handful of screenshots and whole bunch of rumours.

If Sam does release Saffron and it turns out to be as good a tool as people are anticipating then either Identity will cease to be something that is worth developing, and we'll just get on with using Saffron (and be glad about it!) or Identity will still look like it delivers something sufficiently different from Saffron to continue working on it. We may even use Saffron for later stages of development, and/or perhaps refactor some of the Identity features to work as Saffron plugins. In any case, the best feature of open source development is the fact that it won't be my decision. If anybody sees value in continuing development then they can go right ahead and do that!

In using the PureMVC framework we're aiming to create some of the functionality we're going to need as add-ons to the framework which should also have use in other projects. We're going to need a set of lightweight components too, and we'll either be using existing open-source code or developing our own for those - which will also continue to have value regardless of what happens with Identity.

I'm personally building Identity because I really want to use it! As someone who used to be a manufacturing engineer I'm also really interested in production processes, and I'm excited about the solutions that we might develop in delivering truly integrated planning / modeling / documentation / stub-code. I've got no urge to be a big name in the flash community, though if Identity does come to fruition I quite fancy the idea of writing a book about joined up processes in AS3. Or something. Probably AS4 by then ;)

Oddly I'm using CRC and UML to structure the book I'm writing at the moment about Global Climate Change. My chapters are like objects, having responsibilities, collaborations, methods and properties. One of the things that I dream about for Identity is the ability to plug-in alternative tools for organising our thinking. Stuff that hasn't been dreamt up yet ...