How to learn Flex fast

Dec 03, 2007

I have seen many posts and pages lately about how to learn Flex fast. What are the best methods? Which books are the best read? Whose blogs should one read? The short answer, there is no "fast" way to learn Flex. There is no "fast" way to learn anything that is complex. Sure you could pick up some quick hints and hack something out, but did you really learn anything ... likely no. The best way to learn Flex, or any programming language for that matter is to work with it, and work with it, and work with it. Read some books or online resources, experiment, talk to other developers who are using it. It takes time to get proficient in a programming language, much like it takes time (and hard work) to become fluent in a spoken language.

I ran across a post on Flexcoders that planted the seed for this post. There are some war stories there about marathon coding sessions, countless hours spent working and learning, on and on. It all sounds very impressive but I suspect it contains a certain amount of bravado. The truth is, learning something new will take hard work and time. It's not easy, if it was there would not be the demand for Flex developers (or developers in general) that there is. You have to be dedicated to learning, dedicated to putting in the time and thought to mastering something. You can't just read a "Learn Flex in 7 days" book and expect to be some master (or even competent) coder. There's an excellent little post on learning a programming language ... in ten years. The author states it perfectly, it takes years to develop expertise in a wide variety of activities, why should programming be any different. 

As someone who has been developing applications and systems for over ten years I can attest to the fact that there are no shortcuts, no overnight epiphanies when it just all clicks. It takes time to build a foundation of knowledge and experience and then more time to hone your skills and build on that foundation. It took at least five or six years before I can honestly say I started writing code that was "really good" code, concise, easy to read, efficient and robust; work that I was happy to have my name on and knew it could stand up to scrutiny.

So you came here looking for quick answers and instead got an earful from someone who says there are no quick answers. Don't worry, I'm not another blow hard saying it's awful, tedious and give up. Quite the contrary, I want to encourage anyone who honestly wants to learn to not give up, dig in, ask questions, and do it.

Oh, and since you likely came here looking for some quick answers, here are some links to resources I would recommend to get you started.

Adobe Devnet has lots of good tutorials, how to's and sample applications.

Flexcoders is a great place to post a question or find an answer.

Flexcomponents if you are looking for help on figuring out component development.

The Flex 3 and Flex 2 API References, the best place to start learning how Flex works.

Flex.org is a Flex portal with a growing list of resources.