I never really thought about how Flash has affected my life until recently.

My games and open source contributions didn't open a career path or anything life-changing that, but the practice and experience I gained in programming them has absolutely helped me. Coding classes in college, a minor in Computer Science, the light-to-moderate coding I do as part of my job... doing games and all on the side prepared me to be able to take these on. I don't think I would have done the minor or survived at this job without being "fluent" in programming.

Basic concepts like loops and variables of course translate from Actionscript 3 to any other language. But I'll never forget a Java class I took where one assignment was to make a Pacman-style game. Having been coding in AS3 for several years at that point, I was well aware that there's a delay between pressing a key on your keyboard and "holding down" that key (to make typing possible). Without handling it, your character's movement will hiccup almost, before smooth motion begins. I had already dealt with it numerous times back then, so it was trivial for me to do it again for that class. I didn't think about it. Well apparently, almost no one else figured that out and I got bonus points for being clever.

I don't consider 5 points on an assignment to be life-changing, but perhaps the minor and job preparedness were. Maybe I would have gone down that route anyway and learned quickly, but maybe not. Ignoring what maybe could have happened and just looking at what did happen for me, I guess it was life-changing after all. Thanks NG.

Press F and draw a dick to pay your respects.