Knowing object-oriented programming helps. The concepts are not specific to a language although probably most books out there are c++ or Java.

The first thing to realize in Flash is that there are two sides to it: the "design" part (creating graphics, composing sound, etc) and the "scripting" part. The way you approach these can be different, although being able to work on them at the same time is part of the fun.

In terms of books, there are very good books by Colin Moock (Actionscript 2 and 3 reference from O'Reilly). There are many game design books, I've liked "FLash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified" by Jobe Makar which has a lot of good tips and good ideas. There used to be a series of books called "Training from the Source" edited by Macromedia which were OK (I've liked the Flash graphics one better than the programming ne, though).

Another thing you need to know about Flash is that each version has a different approach to programming. Up to Flash 5 it was mostly animations with some very limited scripting (and this is what most ppl think of Flash). Flash MX (6) was better but the programming was very tied to the graphical interface. MX2004 (Flash 7) introduced AS2.0 which is more like a real programming language, an is great although it has some performance issues. Flash 8 (my favorite version so far) introduced the BitmapData objects which solved a lot of problems. It still has some performance gotchas but you can do most things with it. And then there is Flash 9 (and now 10).... which are very different beasts and much closer to C++ or Java (the way you program in those separates content from code).

As to which version to pick, it depends what you want to do with it. If you want to use it in your resume you will need to know the latest (so go for 9 or 10). If it's just something to play around it then Flash 8 is more than enough (at the risk of learning some "bad" habits you'll have to unlearn when going to 9/10). If you want to do something very complex (e.g. 3D) then 9/10 are more performant.




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