Joey Lott is a solid instructor, and in this series takes you briskly but effectively through writing ActionScript 3.0 code in Adobe Flex. It's important to note that Joey is not teaching the mechanics of building an RIA with ActionScript, but more how ActionScript 3.0 works in general. Flex is a great tool for writing pure code and if you're not convinced it's the IDE for you this might just be the trick.

Joey is easy to understand and teaches principles effectively. Its hard to find many good introductory teachers but Joey does a fantastic job of giving you the basics of Object Orientated Languages before spilling into AS 3.

I'd highly recommend this to beginners looking to get their feet wet in AS 3, and for Flash designers looking for why Flex 3 is such a tremendous asset for AS 3 intensive projects.