The Java Posse interviewed James Ward and I during the Devoxx conference last December. Catch it on the excellent parleys.com site or watch it here:
The Java Posse interviewed James Ward and I during the Devoxx conference last December. Catch it on the excellent parleys.com site or watch it here:
9 comments:
Nice talk !
I just LOVE your shirt, where can I get one ? :D
Palleas: Pretty difficult things to come by, these Flex shirts. I had to quit my old job and joing Adobe just to get one.
I thought so, but I wanted to ask anyway !
Thanks ! :)
I listened to this interview. I don't know which of you said this in response to a question about Actionscript...
INTERVIEWER: "is there a new version of Actionscript in the works?"
ADOBE: "The language of Actionscript isn't changing very quickly and that's by design. We don't want to change the language."
...but I was horrified. Adobe, please stop pandering to the AS2 crowd. If they don't want to move on, then just leave them be. No one is stopping them from using AS2 and those of us whose careers depend on your developer products want to move on and are being held back.
I just can't believe that Adobe made that comment on the Java Posse. Unbelievable. What a punch in the teeth!
"Pandering"? Seriously?
Maybe you haven't played with AS3 - there were plenty of great changes in that version of the language that make ActionScript a world-class language. type-safety, classes, interfaces - what's not to love about those changes?
How about those changes you suggested? "Number myNum" instead of "var myNum:Number"? "Number f()" instead of "function f():Number"? Why force people to type more? Since EcmaScript is stuck with the keepin' it compatible (and unusable) as possible, why not introduce AS4 that fixes this stuff? AS3 is already leaps and bounds from being JS Browser compatible.
@Anonymous (catchy name): "changes you suggested"? The changes you mention are differences between Java and AS syntax, but I certainly wasn't proposing making changes like this.
I'm not a language guy, but I think that syntactic differences like this are just part of what the language is. If you want to change things like this, I think you're talking about a new language entirely. I found the var/function declarations backwards or sideways when I first came over from Java, but you get used to it. It's different, but not necessarily better or worse, and certainly not worth changing the language over.
Chet Haase said:
> "Pandering"? Seriously?
Yeah, pandering. Seriously! It sure seems that way Chet. A ton of people didn't make the move from AS2 to AS3. Adobe currently has a big publicity drive to get them to migrate and Adobe's evangelists are in full swing on the subject.
Some of those people were very vocal in their complaints about having to learn new things. Some of them even accused Adobe of releasing AS3 simply to force people to upgrade. Some of them are still very vocal.
Meanwhile, most of us who live on planet earth, who write large, complex applications on which our livelihoods and our business customers depend could really do with some badly needed additions to the Actionscript language, just have that funny feeling that you (Adobe) "don't want to change the language" because you are pandering to the AS2 crowd... the same crowd that is currently taking up so much of Adobe's energy.
AS3 was and is great. There's nothing really that can't be done with it, but for large, complex, mission critical apps, AS3 doesn't go far enough.
Anyhow Chet, you do what suits you and we'll do what suits us. The RIA world is becoming increasingly crowded. If you won't give us what we need, someone will.
heard great stuff from FLEX. just tried to view your blog and got this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mum/3496734735/
no joke...
its seems that flex/flash has stacktraces too, and the apple thing (the flash player) in common with older technology. sarcasm_stopped: looking forward why flex is an alternative to Swing and better than JavaFX.
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