Thoughts on Actionscript/flash/flex...

I am curious to know what people's thoughts are on flash, the flash community, and actionscript as a programming language.

I do like actionscript, it's incredibly easy. Anyone who reads the c++ boards on this forum will know how useless I am at c++, yet I made an xml image viewer ( here ) in less than an hour. Something I wouldn't be able to even attempt with my c++ knowledge.

I think its popularity is partly due to it's accessibility. The power to have objects and graphics whizzing around the screen with minimal code is kinda cool. Currently the flash community are raving about Papervision3D (a 3d graphics API for AS3) and adobe AIR (lets you create desktop applications in flash) hardly groundbreaking stuff as far as programming in general goes.

But I think Mike Chambers put it best when he was talking about AIR. That it allows people to make desktop apps relatively easily without having a degree in computer science, and this is what draws people to it.

As a language, it lacks the speed, power and depth of C++. But as we all know, c++ can be infuriatingly difficult at times, and AS3 offers a welcome break for me at times. I use both, and probably will continue to use both.

I was wondering what other people thought :)

I'm against Flash simply because of the raw power needed to render the crap. Otherwise I think Flash is very good.
We'll see how good Silverlight is.

> I'm against Flash simply because of the raw power needed to render the crap.
Me also, and the fact it eats bandwidth -- and the controls often used in website layouts aren't native (no copy/paste etc). Although the fact it's slow may just be a myth, and it just feels slow -- perhaps some benchmarking is in order.

Not for me (hobby wise), although it does certainly have a use. *waits for someone to try make an OS in AS* :)

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Originally Posted by Stonehambey

I am curious to know what people's thoughts are on flash, the flash community, and actionscript as a programming language.

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I like it, as long as its not overused. It's an essential tool for some websites where the theme (or customer) demands more than just what Javascript and server-side scripting allows you to do.

AS 3.0 is fun to play with and with the proper skills it allows for flash animations to be entirely coded (as opposed to built on the timeline, which increases the file size considerably) faster and easier than ever before. All in all it seems to me that, in the hands of capable designers/programmers, Flash 9 and AS 3.0 can do miracles at a fraction of the bandwidth and with a much better performance than ever before.

In my opinion, it today integrates much better with server-side scripting and javascript, it offers a more logically correct, wide, and powerful event-drive engine, it took a major step in the direction of object oriented programming and it offers a much, much, better performance than before. I also enjoy considerably the fact you can tighten your code much better now, instead of having it all spread out across multiple frames, symbols and movies.

I've played with it recently and plan to do it later again. A few quirks still exist though, particularly it needs a lot more work on the CSS/HTML engine (you know, that bit that allows you to include css/html in your text.)

I haven't tried AIR yet, but don't plan to probably. I'm just not currently interested in internet applications and on the case of desktop development, I'm not interested in trading C++ or Ruby yet. I'm having so much fun with these... why bother? :)

Air however surely must be a blessing to many, I reckon. Because it builds on their already acquired knowledge in Flash and AS 3.0 and seems like a logical move.

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I do like Flash CS3. With only minimal knowledge I was able to do some quiet interesting stuff for the website that will host my game and had fun at it. I can only imagine what a more design oriented person (or a programmer being aided by a designer) can accomplish.

Im making a game now (first paid job), where I am using Adobe Director and javascript. I have been told that javascript is almost the same as actionscript.

I like it very much. Its dead easy (but a bit slow). Coding up something only takes a few hours instead of weeks. Although the documentation (for Director/Javascript) really really sucks!

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Originally Posted by zacs7

> I'm against Flash simply because of the raw power needed to render the crap.
Me also, and the fact it eats bandwidth -- and the controls often used in website layouts aren't native (no copy/paste etc). Although the fact it's slow may just be a myth, and it just feels slow -- perhaps some benchmarking is in order.

Not for me (hobby wise), although it does certainly have a use. *waits for someone to try make an OS in AS* :)

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It doesn't eat bandwidth, it's heavily optimized and compressed. ;)

The only thing that makes it look slow is hundreds of Flash ads...