to give a little background...

I having been developing Flash RIA apps for the past couple years and although I consider myself a hack compared with more schooled programmers, I also have become somewhat proficient at designing useful RIA's for clients. The problem became that I designed most of these apps with limited knowledge of design patterns or OOP and thus collaborating with other developers and designers became nearly impossible as I was the only one who knew what was where and who was what.

So... i decided to work on migrating my most popular RIA from a jumbled mess (that somehow works well!) into an organized MVC RIA (or as close as I can get without going crazy). Flex immediately became very exciting to me as it provided many built in features, components & structures, that I had pulled my hair out trying to create for myself in Flash. In addition, the whole philosophy behind developing Flex apps spoke to that part of me that so desperately wants to be able to hire people to build these apps with me! So I jumped in.

I built my first Flex app (using AMFPHP) in Nov and although there were some major hiccups, I got the general idea quickly. So now it's time to tackle the next step... build a solid MVC app. Unfortunately, I have found that there are some "supposedly simple" things that I can't figure out. I think I understand the theoretical concepts, but then I can't seem to get past something as basic as "Install Cairngorm"! I don't know if any of your have run into these types of problems, but if so, this blog is for you. My goal is to document some of the simple tasks in Flex that seem to elude and bog down those of us who are just starting out.

I am not going to attempt to provide much organization or structure to this blog, but instead just document anything that when I finally figure it out, makes me go "oh of course...I get it!"

If you have any problems you are trying to solve, feel free to send them to me and I will see if I can help. Also, remember I am a hack so PLEASE add your comments if you know of a way to do this better. It is my attempt to get the discussion started, not necessarily solve the problem eloquently. As I get better at this, I am sure I can tackle more important problems, however, for now I will just try to figure out how to turn on my computer.

All the best,

Kevin