I haven been recently laid off and was considering what to learn in the down time while trying to get another job. I had heard that Adobe's FLEX was starting to become more in-demand, and have seen it increasingly on job postings.
Has anyone else been successful (career wise) in learning FLEX? Is it worth spending time to learn FLEX to add a bullet point to a resume, and lead to a possible job or should time be spent else where?
I personally think that it is worth learning Flex. It is without any doubt the best technology out there to create Rich Internet Applications. It may still be somewhat of a niche, but maybe that's a good thing. I mean, if you learn Flex and if you are really good at it, you might be in high demand.
You could also start a blog, participate in discussion groups so people notice you and your skills or start an open-source project and get people involved. The Flex/Flash community is known to be very open and social and it is a pleasure to be a part of it. Don't hide, but dare to show what you've got.
I have been doing Flex work for the last 2-3 years now and get a serious amount of consulting proposals every month.
Good luck!
Some links:
Our vertical industry flag-ship app has been Oracle Forms-based but is being retooled to AIR (actually a RIA hybrid able to run from a AIR host or in Flash Player of a browser). We've also done Flex web apps already. All new GUI development for the applications I oversee development for is moving toward Flex/AIR for the client-side GUI. (We're also using BlazeDS and a Java stack in the middle-tier for our services layer.)
I have taken some Flex training classes. The instructor said that the huge majority of her clients are big companies that are training their developers for in-house Flex application development. If Java is the 21st century's COBOL, then Flex is the new Visual Basic (in a good way).
I think there is a growing market for Flex and AIR developers to build in-house apps that might have been Visual Basic apps 10 years ago. Flex apps have the advantages of a real object-oriented language, a huge library of flashy (and Flashy :) GUI components, and strong integration with web service and data binding.
And perhaps the biggest advantage is that Flex apps can be cross-platform and browser-based, so they can be accessed from anywhere without installing software. (IT will be happy they have fewer apps to maintain and upgrade on their corporate desktops. :)
Sorry to hear that, friend -- I hope you're able to land a replacement soon.
For my part, it's no exaggeration to say the job I have today I have, in large part, because of Flex. A year and a half ago I had no idea what Flex even was -- a friend just happened to need some help throwing together a data-driven Flash demo, and I'd heard about this thing called Flex, so I picked up Professional Flex 2, dove in, and less than a year later, the wife and I were on our way to Seattle. It might sound cheesy, but Flex has quite literally changed our lives. (To be fair, I'd been programming for close to ten years by then, so I might've had a bit of a leg up just for my experience, but nonetheless, I was still starting from scratch with both Flex and Flash.)
So yes, I'd say go for it, particularly if you're interested in the realm of the UI. But I do have to say that while Flex is surprisingly simple to get up and running with quickly, it's also deceptive in that apparent simplicity -- I've been with it for just over a year, read easily ten books if not more on Flex & AS, and spend most of my waking time hacking code in AS3, and I'm only now beginning to feel like I understand how it all works. The range of proficiency among Flex devs is vast -- throwing together a line-of-business app might be easy (and fun!), but the learning curve shoots upward fast, and with Flash, the Flash player, and now AIR, well, there's just lot of material to absorb.
The good news, though, is that you can get up and running with it quickly, and you can probably learn enough in a short-enough span of time to be able to provide some good value to an employer or client in the near term. I believe I read that first book in just under a week, and three weeks later, the prototype was complete. My code was a hideous, convoluted mess, but hey -- it worked!
Best of luck to you.
I think it absolutely makes sense to learn a RIA technology and Flex is easily the most capable one in the market today.
If you are a .NET developer and have spent a lot of time in different MS shops then Silverlight might make more sense. Even though it's a less mature solution, in the future that's going to change. MS is picking up a lot of ground on Flex.
As some of the other guys have pointed out, there are legions of crappy thick-client applications sitting behind firewalls that you've never seen (and probably wouldn't want to)! These are screaming to be rewritten with a good UI using a RIA technology. It'll doubtless be a valuable skill to have.
First of all, to answer your question - I'm not sure where you want to work, but in the Boston area, there seems to be a pretty good demand for Flex developers. The caveat is that although you might spend 99% of your time coding in Flex (this is the case for me), I think most employers would definitely want you to have experience with another platform, such as Java, .NET, PHP, or Ruby.
But, if you care about the quality of your work, don't do it just to "add another bullet point to your resume". I've been coding in Flex daily for two years, and I'm still learning all kinds of details about the framework, and the Flash platform on which it is delivered. If you're genuinely interested in doing Flex development, then it's a lot of fun and you should dive into it. But if all you do is read a book about Flex and make a sample app, then you probably know just enough to be dangerous to your new employer, unless they already have some solid, experienced Flex developers and are willing to mentor you as you go.
I certainly wouldn't see it as a downside. Recently at work, we examined bringing in contractors as extra resource on a project and my manager told me:
you'll be doing the Flex stuff - .NET contractors are easy to come by, but Flex ones seem to be based in London and cost a fortune!.
:o)
I'm enjoying learning Flex and whilst, as with any programming language, it has its challenges, the potential for creating great-looking, slick apps is there.
I would've thought it a very marketable skill, because it usually pushes up your interface design skills too.
Best of luck!
Flex is worth learning, yes.
But I say this because in USA/Canada, there are plenty of jobs for Flex. In London (where I live), very few).
I too have learnt Flex, but not quite to a commercial standard. I have some way to go on that.
I think Flex is better browser compatible, which may make it popular.
As stated above, you would need to know a server-side language like C# or Java, or the application won't be able to do much. So really, your luck would also depend on what language you choose (all are popular).
sidebar Now with Flash Catalyst (CS5), UI is now an easier part of dev cycle. You still need flash and flex, but developers can spend far less time on UI and more on function. /sidebar
I think the answer is, if you're currently solving problems with code, then learn it. If you're not naturally a programmer, you can get knee deep in something you think could maybe save you career-wise, but you have no time to actually become marketable. If you're unemployed, focus on what you already know and get re-employed.
i hear html5 is up and coming (primarily due to the apple/iphone/ipad) and may be a worthy opponent to flex in terms of new marketable frameworks to put on a resume. anyone know exactly how it compares to flex in term of the job market?
I have been trying to learn flex for the last two years. With my regular job as a system analyst i jump into actionscript to sharpen my coding skills for the flex framework but its been a step learning curve - primarily because of my lack in object oriented programming earlierexcept for php and javascript (if you wanna consider them OOP) .. what do u recommend me so that i an up and running in flex.