Ted Patrick has written a blog called 10 Signs you need to join the FlexComponents List. I like Ted’s list, but here’s my version.
1. You’ve read a book on object-oriented programming and think that you understand the difference between inheritance and composition.
2. Your boss likes this little thingy that you’ve included on the Customers screen and wants to see the same functionality on the Invoice window.
3. You sincerely believe that you are the only one who knows how to create an auto-complete text field and can make money by selling Flex components
4. Your girlfriend comes home late on Wednesdays saying that she is developing Flex components with her college room mate, you do not know what it is but smell something fishy.
5. You want to prove that you can create a button that will broadcast an event to whoever wants to listen, and an enclosing application will receive it!
6. Your college professor gave you the homework to write Flex component
7. You are a naive college graduate and still believe that cut-and-paste is bad and writing reusable code is possible even thought your dad said that it’s BS.
8. It’s raining outside, and you don’t have money to fill the tank of your car to drive to the supermarket and get some beer to think about something more exciting than writing Flex components.
9. You truly believe that any framework will tie your hands and hurt your creativity, and just using self-contained components is a way to go.
10. You want to earn respect in the Flex community.
Homework. To turn this list into a component reusable for all languages/technologies, do the following:
1. Put this list into into a data collection
2. Introduce two bindable variables and use them in the list above:
[Bindable]
var tool:String=”Java”;
[Bindable]
var evangelist:String=”Joe Smith”;
3. Compile this component into an swc file
4. Create a sample application that has two TextInput fields, a list and a button, so the user can enter the language and evangelist’s name of their choice.
5. Deploy the swc as an RSL and explain pros and cons of this approach.
Yakov Fain
Adobe Certified Flex Instructor