Beginning to Flex
If you read my About page you'll see that I have ambitions to take a look at Adobe AIR at some point and to take a look at Flash also. Well for a short while now I've been taking a peek at Adobe Flex. It seems that there are three ways to approach AIR, the JavaScript route, the Flash route or the Flex route. Initially I was going to take the JavaScript route which would involve me firstly learning JavaScript, however the Flex route seems a little more attractive.
Firstly Flex seems geared up to producing client-side applications, having a comprehensive set of pre-built components than can be used to construct application interfaces. Secondly Flex gets compiled into ActionScript 3 code and AS3 is now looking more like a proper programming language with object orientated programming foundations. JavaScript stills seems a little like a toy language, although I'm sure that I'm being very unfair and that it's come a long way with things like the jQuery library and the like. Still, I like the thought that I can use AS3 to write classes, it just seems more structured and what I'm used to.
So yesterday, as part of my attempt to become acquainted with Flex, I took delivery of two new books; Programming Flex 3, by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott, and Essential ActionScript 3.0, by Colin Moock. Now I hope to read these books and write a review for them both. The problem is that I rarely, if ever, make it through to the end of such text books. I tend to get half-way through a book and decide that I have enough information to be getting on with and then put the book down. I must make a concerted effort to read these two books.
I already have a few ideas for applications that I'd like to write for the AIR platform but I feel that I should try to limit my ambitions first of all, while I'm learning about Flex and ActionScript, and develop some rather more simplistic examples. I may write some exercises as a way of settings goals for myself and then perhaps blog about my progress. Often the problem I find when learning a programming language is the lack of projects with which to apply the skills being learnt.
Posted by Graham Blake on 28th February 2009 at 07:31