Well opening the book up you will see it's just a dissection of different games and tons of comments on how stuff works on a practical level. There will never be a functional actionscript book that is good because you can just borrow a java one and it's the same deal.
I guess you're right.. it's just I've found better books to help program games, and while they were in AS3, they didn't necessarily deal with game development. I think this is not really a book one that is learning AS3 should start with. That's all. I'm not saying it's not a good book, it's just I wouldn't suggest it for beginners.
Learning a language can take weeks or months.
Well... not if you go to the right places. I started learning AS3 a year ago, and while I am still learning, I probably had the skills to code a month after learning how to use AS3. (Even now I'm only fourteen going fifteen in a couple of months, which I'm guessing would be a lot younger than most game devs on this forum.) It all boils down to sheer determination and just how much you want to learn it. It also depends on your past experience with languages. If you've learnt a language before, chances are, depending on the language, you could learn a second one. (I flipped through a beginner's book to C++ the other day, and while I haven't coded in C++ ever before, the language was relatively simple to understand, apart from a few things to understand.) Also, don't forget, all languages have some form of learning curve. From what I've heard from other devs, Actionscript has been generally considered to have a lower learning curve than Microsoft languages (C, C#, C++, Basic, etc.), which seem to be on average lower than Java. In other words, AS3 < C < Java. (However, I'm quoting other people and that's what they said. Also, don't take my word for it. Who knows, someone may pick up a Java book and understand it first try.)
