This was a five-week Adobe Flex evening class at New York University, one of the top-tier schools in the USA.
When I found out that eighty percent of my students were Java programmers, I decided to turn this class into an intensive training experience.
This was a hands-on class, plus students were working on their own on home works (complete working applications) between the sessions. For each class I’ve given 15-page custom-made handout, and here’s a quick summary of what I’ve covered:
Session 1. Architecture of Rich Internet Applications. Hands-n demo of an …AJAX application. Flex Builder. Development of a calculator.
Session 2. States, ActionScript, List-based controls, Data Binding – multiple use cases
Session 3. XML with E4X, Namespaces, Five different ways of programming in Flex depending on your background, Regular Expressions.
Session 4. Flex-JSP communication, Events, custom components
Session 5. A lab on custom events. Detailed code review of an application utilizing Flex remoting with RemoteObject, HTTPService
In the beginning of each class I’d ask students to stop me if I was moving too fast. They’d say, “We’re fine, go ahead”. At the end of the class students asked for the next, more advanced class. Universities do not add new classes to their programs too often, but NYU deserves lots of credits for being an early adopter of Adobe Flex 2. They did not include advanced class in their program yet, but I’ll re-run the same class in April. Re-run is a wrong word here, because I always teach something different. Money-wise, this class was an absolute bargain – only six hundred bucks for five evenings with me. Hmm, does it sound like a whore’s statement? Nope. Pretty Woman? Yakov, stop it, we are talking about EDUCATION here, get serious, will you! OK, OK. Sorry. No, just one more…singing…We do not need no education…Pink Floyd…
Beside NYU I’ll be co-teaching one day Flex Workshop at a famous AjaxWorld conference in March and private corporate gigs in the USA and Europe (btw, would love to go to India while it’s not too hot there). I’m also wondering if there is a huge demand in Adobe Certified Flex Instructors in Hawaii, Paris, Tokyo and Bangkok?
Yours truly,
Yakov Fain