Flash versus Flex

Question

I\'ve tried looking everywhere for a concise list of the advantages and disadvantages of using Flex vs. Flash.

Coming from a programming background, I absolutely lo

Answer 1

In my opinion, the most important feature of the Flex framework is the component lifecycle, which provides a really elegant model for validation/invalidation of properties, component size, and hierarchical rendering.

The benefit to developers is that it creates discrete application phases for business logic and rendering, avoiding expensive geometry & rendering code until the last possible moment before drawing a frame.

Here's a really good presentation, explaining how it works:

http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15384v1002

The model is so well-designed that the component lifecycle remains almost entirely invisible during the majority of Flex development, when you're using the framework default components and containers. You only need to learn the inner-workings when you start developing your own components.

Developing in the Flash environment, or in pure Actionscript, you don't get any of that. Anyone developing pure AS3 applications either needs to code very carefully to separate business logic from rendering, or will suffer severely decreased performance.