Our company continues using Flex framework for development of our own product for insurance industry as well as for various consulting engagements. Being responsible for interviewing Flex developers, I see how the situation on the job market of Flex developers is quickly changing. If a year ago finding a senior Flex developer was mission impossible, during the last two weeks I’ve interviewed five applicants for the job, and three of them were seniors.

But all of their resumes have one thing in common – no or very little exposure to the server side technologies. I can foresee that more and more seasoned Flex developers will have to face the same problem: no Java means no job.

That’s why I decided to run an online presentation for the members of the NJ Flex Users Group. This rather long presentation has been recorded and is available as a screencast.

I’ve explained the Java basics comparing this language with ActionScript 3 everywhere I could. This presentation started with a quick HelloWorld in Eclipse, and then quickly progressed to abstract classes, generics, multi-threading and Java servlets. The more time a Flex developer spends with Java the better.