I cannot afford the Creative Suite or Flex Builder but I would like to develop a commercial Flex/ActionScript AIR application. Is this a viable goal and are there robust tools out there that don't cost a small fortune?
Have others done this? What am I missing out on without Adobe's pricey software?
You can build AIR Apps using the command line tool in the SDK which is free for anyone to download and use.
More info is on this page: http://www.adobe.com/products/air/tools/
I quote:
If you prefer working with a text editor or another development environment, the free Adobe AIR SDK provides the tools you need to package and deploy Adobe AIR applications built using HTML, JavaScript, or Flash.
This is a direct link to the AIR SDK: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=airsdk
You should have no problem using that in conjunction with the Flex SDK, which also available at no cost.
You can get Flash Builder Standard for $249. I believe this to be nominal compared to the hourly rate that you'd pay a programmer to build an application. There are other IDEs with Flex support including FDT ( http://www.fdt.powerflasher.com/ ), IntelliJ ( http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/index.html ), and a couple of plugins to Visual Studio. ( http://www.ashorten.com/2008/12/10/new-flex-ide-options-for-net-and-java-developers/ ).
Most of these have an associated cost. It is my personal opinion that the $249 for Flash Builder Standard is nominal when you consider the cost of a developer's time.