Having spent the best part of the last six months delving head first in the world of Flex, I have to say I have not come to like it. Watching from the sidelines, someone might even think I despise it.

Nevertheless, I think there are projects where Flex could be the right choice:

• Quick protos with absolutely no concern with looks and user experience. The “create a Flex app in 15 minutes” examples included in the documentation, the ones that make you feel all great about your newfound Flex programming skillz, fall into this category.
• Small to mid-size projects (say, up to 6 man-months), in which you can live with basic CSS skinning and with the short-comings of the Flex components, and with the mediocre user experience resulting from those choices.
• Very large projects (12+ man-months), where the extensive time investment required to fine-tune the looks and perfect the UX of Flex components is justified. These are mostly projects where Flex competes against DHTML rather than pure ActionScript solutions.

This specifically leaves out the kind of projects we usually do: small to mid-size projects with great concern for aesthetics and user experience.

Well, a lesson learned (and an expensive one, if I may add).