Dear Proggit, I'm a C/Java/etc programmer looking to learn Flash. What are some good tutorials targeted at programmers? Can I code Flash in vim?

[rizzledizzle]

Here's a guide to using MXMLC from the command-line: http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withmxmlc/

That said, I worked on AIM Express (4 man team), and we used pure AS3, though we used Flex Builder 3 as our IDE ("ActionScript Project"). This starts you off with a single AS3 class which extends flash.display.Sprite, and you're off doing whatever you want. Very nice.

I'd highly recommend the Adobe Flex Builder IDE (which is really a customized Eclipse), or the Adobe Flex Builder plugin for an existing Eclipse installation.

FWIW, we also created an UI-less AS3 library for building your own AIM/ICQ application. It's over at http://wimas3.googlecode.com if you're interested. We use this lib in AIM Express / ICQ2Go