Choosing from the Two Faces of Flash

As Flash developers, we really are in the 'golden age'. I think back to what was achievable back in the glory days of version 1 (circa 1996 I think), and I'm so glad I stuck with it and am still using it today.

But I am finding that I am becoming more and more torn between the two faces of Flash - the creative and the technical. We are starting to see jobs come through now from both camps. We have straight-out application development being done in Flash, for various platforms and environments. Then we also have the creative, or marketing-focussed, pieces that aren't doing anything really other than looking great and communicating a marketing message (or developing a brand).

It strikes me that the great divide is getting larger, and that less and less opportunites are coming through where both sides of the coin are as relevant as each other. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it's starting to hurt my head :) Don't get me wrong, I think that Flash is continuing to provide incredible power to both creative and technical applications, and I continue to be in love with it as a development platform for both. But for me personally, coming from version 1 (where there were only 12 commands you could choose from, and they were all options rather than scripting that you wrote) I'm thinking I'm going to have to sit on one side of the fence or the other pretty soon.

Flash-ward and onward!