Flex should be the name of a toolset — or at most meaning an enterprise development methodology — not a technological ecosystem in and of itself, as it has currently come to be known. Flex is just a subset of the Flash platform, a component framework and compiler toolset.

As Flex Builder grows into a more flexible tool not constrained to be used only with the Flex framework, to demonstrate its improved interoperability with Flash Professional and Flash Catalyst, it needs to lose the word Flex and be branded under the larger umbrella of a Flash Platform tool, not just a Flex tool. Which is a good thing.

I’ve written more on this topic on my blog here.

I think that for developers who have been around the block a few times, it’s easy to identify both sides of the debate:
- the developers who are too “serious” and “professional” and “accomplished” to be developing in Flash
- the developers who are tired of having to explain to everyone in their family and circle of friends the difference between Flash and Flex in order to justify the seriousness of what they’re doing (“It’s enterprise-level development using Flash, *honest!*”)

Frankly, I grew out of the first category by simple maturation (though I can still remember a distant me from years ago turning my nose up on various “un-serious” languages/platforms). As for the second, well I frankly don’t care what you call the technology I’m paid to use, as long as a) it has decent market share (and therefore is professionally rewarding to me personally) and b) I can use it to create the software that I imagine in my head.

The “Flash Platform” easily covers both, whatever name Adobe gives to the individual bits and pieces.

Up to this day there’s an article on the Adobe Labs website that reads:
“Gumbo, the next version of Flex Builder, …”

Obviously that cannot that cannot help at all.