Lately I’ve been spending time contemplating what route I want to take in my future Flash endevours. I feel I’ve come to a crossroads in terms of which package I should be using for development, Flash or Flex Builder.
With the release of Flash CS4’s blatant lack of code editor improvements I think it’s becomming clear that Adobe are intentionally trying to funnel off the more serious developers down the Flex path.
I personally have reached a point where I do 90% of my Flash work with pure Actionscript. I’m currently using FlashDevelop. It’s only been recently that I’ve gone out of my way to investigate Flex a little more and see what it has to offer.
It may sound silly, but I think I would feel guilty using Flex because of it’s component based architecture. For example I’ve recently been working on a web app where I’ve built my own windowing framework with draggable windows, scrollbars etc all created in AS using the drawing API. Now from looking at Flex, I could have just used the Panel component and re-styled it using CSS. However there’s a certain satisfaction creating my own components from scratch which I’m not convinced I would get from Flex. (I told you it sounded silly).
Anyway, I guess I’m looking for some advice from people who have developed in both Flash and Flex. I’d love to hear your experiences on transitioning from Flash to Flex. Generally and advice is appreciated.
