Learning Flex 4: Advice

Question

So, the company I'm working at uses Flex and Java for their product.

Currently, I'm just an XML editor, but I would like to get my hands dirty with some of the technology they use as soon as possible.

I was wondering if anyone who has learned Flex could possibly give me some advice on the best way to learn Flex as quickly as possible without getting burnt out and maybe some things you wish you had known prior to learning Flex.

I know with most technologies I've learned there are those things you wished you had known sooner.

I'm currently working my way through the book "Adobe Flex 4 Training from the Source vol 1". So far everything is pretty easy(I'm up to array collections), but I'm not sure how effective following the examples in this book really is.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This series of videos comes courtesy of Adobe: http://macromediastudiomx.com.br/devnet/flex/videotraining.html

I also found David Tucker's introduction to the Cairngorm framework very helpful http://www.davidtucker.net/category/cairngorm/

Answer 2

Along with videos and demos, find a small project which would work well with a Flex UI and start implementing it. New languages and frameworks are hard to understand until you actually have a problem to solve using them. Canned demos and "hello world" style applications are great for an introduction, but (in my experience) don't do a lot to move you forward in your overall competency level.

Answer 3

You could join a Flex User's Group.