Beginning Java and Flex: Migrating Java, Spring, Hibernate and Maven Developers to Adobe Flex (Expert's Voice in Web Development) Review

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Beginning Java and Flex: Migrating Java, Spring, Hibernate and Maven Developers to Adobe Flex (Expert's Voice in Web Development) ReviewBackground:
I am relatively new to Java and trying to get a handle on Spring, Hibernate and Flex to get a full life-cycle app built. I have been doing OOP for many many years, and I'm finally giving in to learn Java.
Overview:
I have a Safari subscription on O'Reilly and decided to take a run through this book before deciding whether or not it would belong on the coveted tech shelf in my office. I've spent the last 3 days going through this book, and I'm only on page 353. So far, I'm incredibly happy that I did *not* buy this book.
Details:
I realize the author does not use English as a first language, but someone at the publisher should have been editing this thing. There are grammar mistakes EVERYWHERE and I'm pretty confident that absolutely *no* technical editing was done on this. Examples are missing logic and routines, the author says to name a file one way, but the files are actually named something different. It's incredibly painful to follow along in the book with the examples - as very few things make sense.
Several examples walk you through creating something in Eclipse; then essentially says "If you run this, this is what you'll see:" with a pretty screenshot of something working. The problem is that you get compiler errors, POM errors, namespace errors... the errors never end. On a few examples, the author will walk you through entering all the code, show you what it looks like, and THEN tell you what the supporting files are - after you've been wondering why your project won't compile.
I'm trying to learn something new - the last thing I want to do is start troubleshooting random little file includes and other things on a system I'm not familiar with. Your obligation as an author/editor/publisher is to "hold" my hand through the process! You need to tell me what I need to do in Eclipse, what to add to the POM, help me create the POJO's, then what beans I need to add - and above all else, the examples MUST work!
Sample Code:
If you're a developer at any level, you live and die by sample code. I searched and searched for the sample code, but it simply does not exist; maybe it just exists on an included CD-Rom? Also - don't expect any of the URLs the author provides in the book to work. None of them work. All links to the author's personal site shows a poorly designed Flex app showing this book's dust cover in Pv3d. Seriously? The book is hardly out a year and you've already taken down the assets (ldiff, svn, etc) from your website?
Recommendation:
This book is definitely not for a beginner. Your programming skills must be at an intermediate level and you must be prepared to troubleshoot the authors non-working examples.
Also, don't skip ANY chapters; the examples the author provides rely on seemingly random files being created in previous chapters. Specifically, the chapter on Flex (ch7), starts off by showing the code examples in Flex - which is fine. I skipped that chapter as I am quite proficient in Flex. Little did I know as I continued reading chapter 8, that the author decided to write a bunch of *Java* code in the previous chapter - you know, the chapter on *Flex*. INCREDIBLY frustrating. The author also says to create a new project in ch8, and then files magically appear in his screen shots (e.g. - users.xml), that were shown in ch7 (shown as an example - not asked to actually create the file).
Final Thoughts:
I don't mean to disparage the author as I'm sure he's quite proficient in the technologies he wrote about. After spending the last 3 days trying to get up to speed on Java/Spring/Hibernate/BlazeDS, I am incredibly frustrated and burnt out on this book. I was going to try and push through this book to see if I could get something out of it - but I give up. Yes, I only have 1 chapter left - but I've devoted enough of my life to this book and need to cut my loss.
It is unfortunate that the publishing company dropped the ball on this author - this book had great potential and their lack of editing and technical editing ruined it.Beginning Java and Flex: Migrating Java, Spring, Hibernate and Maven Developers to Adobe Flex (Expert's Voice in Web Development) OverviewThe Open Source Flex framework for doing Java-based RIA (Rich Internet Applications) in Flash is growing in size. 250,000 to 300,000 developers have adopted Flex; and Java is biggest audience slice of these developers. Back in 2006 at JBossWorld, approx 50% of JBoss (Java) customers were either using Flash or considering Flash for their front end, client side solutions.Beginning Java and Flex will likely be the first tutorial book on using the new Adobe Flex 4 with Java frameworks like Spring, Hibernate, Maven and more. It will in general likely be one of the first that includes Flex 4 coverage, the latest framework from Adobe that lets developers build and create Flash applications and Web front ends.This book will also be one of the first books on introducing Java developers to Flex in general.

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