Hello, just have a few questions. Interested in learning programming of Actionscript 3 and Next.

1- Is Flash Builder worth the $250 and $700 for the Standard and Premium editions?
Saddened they do not have a Student discount for it. I can get the whole CS6 Master Collection for $800 tho =/ Might as well do so, in time, no?

2- Is there an alternative, free or otherwise, that won't limit me in anyway? Flash Develop?

3- Do you recommend any books for learning Actionscript 3 and/or Programming in general, something that would help me in the long run?
I like books, there are many on Amazon. Still, not sure which would be good to completely begin with.

4- Other resources or tips or whatever you would like to tell me?
(Hopefully, not about HTML5 or other technologies )

Flash Develop is more than you need at this point in the ballgame, and if later you want to invest in Flash Builder you can do that. But I'd focus on the learning AS3 side of things. There are several quality books from O'Reilly books, and it really depends on whether or not you are just beginning or have experience with programming with other languages already.

Completely new to it all. My concentration is on Networking Technology, some programming classes but haven't taken none yet.
But I like the position of Flash, I'm interested on it.

Which of the O'Reilly books would you recommend and why, if you can? I'll get a few anyways...got the money for my learning. Just don't want to "waste" much of it.

(EDIT: I'm interested in Adobe AIR, very much!)

~Thank you for the response!

Essential Actionscript 3.0 is a great book and Foundation Actionscript : Making things move is another.

Actionscript 3.0 Cookbook is good, as it covers some of the more common tasks you might run into and the best way to do them with AS3. But I wouldn't consider it a good first book for someone completely new to programming.

Alright, I got FlashDevelop. Went for the book "Learning ActionScript 3 by Rich Shupe, O’Reilly" as on my searches someone recommended it over the "Essential" one because its a step above in "freshness of content". If it fails, I'll get another one...

IgnatusZuk, Its my first programming experience and programming language to want to try start with. You really recommend working with Graphics Frameworks so soon?

I'd recommend starting with the resources that Adobe provide. Get familiar with the ActionScript 3.0 Developer's Guide and ActionScript 3.0 Reference, go through some of their tutorials, then maybe start reading a book about progamming in general, not AS3 specific.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/dev/index.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript.html