Resources for Learning ActionScript 3.0 as a Professional Programmer

Question

I will be teaching myself ActionScript 3.0. I'm a professional programmer with great knowledge of C++, C#, Objective-C and Java. Is there any good source for learning the language that doesn't take a lot of space teaching the reader OOP and other beginner level information? More like "classes in ActionScript differs from classes in C++ in these regards ...". I'm looking for something like "C# for C++-developers".

Answer 1

Here are a few I found by googling 'actionscript for java developers':

1. JavaWorld Article

2. InfoQ Article

3. DZone Article

Waiting for other resources to show up here :)

Most actionscript 3.0 books do cover the basics( I don't think there is a way around that). Probably the Flex And Java titles might be more relevant.

Answer 2

If I were you, I'd bite the bullet and do a few simple, silly tutorials just to get started and understand the environment. It wouldn't take very long just to familiarize yourself with the core concepts.

Once you know the very basics, you can set yourself an interesting mini-project (maybe a simple game?) and learn incrementally from the online documentation, which contains good code examples that show a lot of the API's functionality.

Answer 3

I'd recommend reading over Colin Moock's "Essential ActionScript 3.0," published by O'Reilly, to get familiar with the language. Either that, or Adobe's "Programming ActionScript 3.0," which is provided with the Flash or Flex IDE.

Beyond those, I'd recommend the ActionScript 3.0 Language Reference. Just keep that handy and you'll eventually memorize the most common APIs.

Answer 4

I would also recommend Colin Moock's "Essential ActionScript 3.0,".

Another good source that I found useful is a series of Adobe video tutorials you can find here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/