ActionScript Developer's Guide to Robotlegs

Chapter 2. The Robotlegs dream...

Some great frameworks exist, but they’re intimidating

When Robotlegs came into existence, there was no lack of AS3 frameworks to choose from. PureMVC and Cairngorm had forged the way. Parsley, Swiz, Mate—they were all getting plenty of attention. So why bother creating yet another AS3 framework? And what would Robotlegs offer that other frameworks didn’t already have covered?

Well, that’s simple—Shaun Smith was intrigued by the idea of a framework that wouldn’t give him a headache—a framework that did less, and thus required you to learn less, change your programming behavior less and left fewer opportunities for the only metric that we think matters: WTFs per minute.

80% of the problems can be solved with 20% of the API

(and 90% less cognitive load)

Developers often get excited about the Robotlegs filesize footprint—adding less than 20k to your published swf. We’re much more excited about the Robotlegs cognitive footprint—how little there is to learn to get up and running with Robotlegs.

Robotlegs was always intended to be a pareto^[1] solution: it’s the 20% of functionality that solves 80% of your programming problems. The YAGNIator (YAGNI = you aren’t gonna need it!) was applied ruthlessly. This means that you can carry it in your brain’s pocket: complete use of the core Robotlegs framework only requires you to understand how to use eight classes. Yes, eight. That’s all. And these aren’t monolithic enormous classes. Most Robotlegs apps require you to ...