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Hello all,
Since I don't really have a blog (nor the time to continually update it), the front page of the PureMVC site has traditionally been reserved for information such as announcements of new ports or particularly instructive demos, and (prior to their maturity) new releases of the ActionScript reference implementations. This can lead to the front page looking the same for sometimes months, and in today's blog-centric world - a sense of staleness as though nothing is going on. The original goal of the framework was to scope, implement, bug-fix and feature-freeze so that those who build upon it do not have to continually upgrade to the 'latest and greatest'. The new stuff comes in the form of utilities and demos; sometimes not earth-shattering enough to warrant front page news.
But if you take a peek at the forums, you'll find a thriving community asking and answering questions and you'll find me there daily. And if you're a member of the Linked-in network, you'll find a healthy community of professionals there in the PureMVC Developer's Group. The framework has now been ported to 11 different programming languages and the best practices docs are available in French, German, Chinese and English!
But despite the availability of thorough documentation, demos and the high signal-to-noise ratio here at the PureMVC.org forums, there's still a clammoring for more tutorials and courseware for PureMVC. This is completely understandable, and forthcoming, though I must be honest - very slowly. I am only one man and I also have to earn a living, since PureMVC is free, open-source and no one pays me a dime to maintain it. But it is a labor of love and though my bandwidth is sometimes squeezed to nearly zero (as it is when I am onsite with a client for extended periods of time), maintain it I will. This is where I live, no matter where I am in the world.
One thing that has slowed the pace of new code releases is that contributors must go through me to make it into the Manifold. This is a bottleneck, and one that contributors with submissions sitting in the queue for months at a time can become quite discontent about. For this I am terribly sorry, but know that I havent forgotten you, my queue is just unbelievably deep.
The problem is that in order to maintain the quality and regularity of projects in the Manifold ( nearly 80 Ports, Demos and Utilities to date ), there must be a gatekeeper. Look at the randomness of the code repositories and documentation for the enormous number of projects you find on Google Code, and you'll appreciate the homogeneity of the PureMVC Manifold. Each project has its own repository, wiki, and forum discussion area. They all follow the same format so once you become familiar with the project, its easy find what you need and use it right away. It's quality, not quantity that I'm concerned with.
To help clear the submissions bottleneck, I'm actively searching for someone who is devoted enough to the project to take on the responsibility of Manifold Master. This is a lot of responsibility requiring a lot of attention to detail and mad SVN and Trac skills in addition to a long term devotion to the project. It won't help if you're not willing to put in at least 2-4 full days a month on an a regular basis for several years. Fair-weather volunteers cannot take this post, there is too much to learn and no margin for turnover. Frankly, I do not think this person exists.
The only other answer is for an agency who is deeply invested in PureMVC as a sound solution for their clients, who has a professional with these skills on hand and is farsighted enough to realize that devoting some his or her ongoing bandwidth to the project would be an excellent investment. Not only would you be casting yourself in a good light in the community, but you'd be helping to ensure that the framework you use everyday continues to improve and spread. This leads to more bright developers being able to hit the ground running on your projects, which means growth despite a 'down economy'.
Finally, I'd like to mention that I'll be presenting at FITC Toronto in late April. My topic is 'Getting in the Groove with PureMVC', and I'll be going beyond the detailed framework overview that I've delivered to audiences around the world in the past. That content now available online after having delivered it a few times to user groups via Acrobat Connect.
This time, after an extremely quick overview for those who may not be familiar with PureMVC, we'll dive straight into building a PureMVC / AS3 application by hand. I want to give a sense of what it's actually like from a day-to-day development perspective, and also how to use MultiCore and the new StateMachine Utility in real life. If you're developing non-trivial Flex, Flash or AIR apps with PureMVC this is how you should be doing it, folks. If you're serious about development with PureMVC, you need to be at FITC this year! Of course, there are a ton of other reasons to be there, so go start hounding your boss today. Make your reservations now before the conference hotel fills up and all the flights into Toronto are booked. Now is the time to differentiate yourself in the market by having the knowledge it takes to stomp the competition!
Cheers,
-=Cliff>
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