HYPE — Branden Hall & Joshua Davis — is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3. A major goal of HYPE is to allow newcomers to Flash and ActionScript to creatively play and express themselves while they are learning how to program. To get started, the user needs only the most basic knowledge of programming – variables, conditionals, loops, and functions, for example. As the user learns more about programming they can extend HYPE and thus grow their skills, while at the same time inspiring the next generation.

Now, that’s not to say HYPE is just for people who are new to programming. Instead, HYPE is for anyone, regardless of skill, who wants to play with code. Fundamentally, the point of HYPE is to make Flash fun again. We made HYPE to help bring back the playfulness that once defined our community.

Background: For more than 10 years the Flash community has been incredibly unique in it’s vibrancy and creativity. This is a community that was essentially created by the users. It was driven by the beautiful, amazing, and downright cool things that people were creating with Flash. In the beginning the most innovative works were created by designers, artists and other non-developers. These people created the “hype” that made Flash rise above, way above, any similar technologies – but today these enthusiasts are becoming an endangered species.

Flash has matured incredibly in the past decade, but it has done so in a way that has blocked non-developers from even getting started. The simple fact of the matter is that with older versions of Flash you could learn the tool and how to program ActionScript almost entirely through creative play. With the latest iterations, unless you have a background in object-oriented programming, that method of learning by doing is simply not an option.