Adobe Flex, First Impressions

During the last couple of weeks, I've been working with Flex to see if it would be a better fit for the app I'm working on than AJAX.

It is.

Here's what I like about Flash/Flex:

• Good support for OOP (OOP is a natural fit for UI development)
• ActionScript is also a functional language (like Javascript)
• Binding (a mechanism for stringing UI controls to data structures with minimal effort)
• The platform is robust, compared to browsers
  

I don't like the sluggish compilation step during debugging.


It looks like Flash/Flex is pretty well positioned and moving forward in many fronts:

• Open Sourcing parts of the platform and development tools attracts developers
• Flash support is getting better on mobile devices (Nokia, Apple)
  
• Flex is gaining foothold as an alternative UI for business applications (SAP)
  

I think Flex is well worth learning.