Comments on: MXMLC WTF (3)

By: Stu

Stu — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:59:12 +0000

“Long live :*” ??

Man, I’m glad I don’t have to pick up your code !

By: Veli Ogla Sungutay

Veli Ogla Sungutay — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:31:16 +0000

Good work with these WTFs. :) I can’t say anything about the “var”, but you should definitely check out the haxe language and compiler, at http://haxe.org

By: Theo

Theo — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 10:00:45 +0000

I dislike many aspects of ActionScript and of the Flash API:s, but the fact is that the Flash platform is the best by far if you want to make RIA:s and there is no alternative.

By: julien

julien — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 09:27:56 +0000

Hi,

Interesting post ... but if you dislike ActionScript so much, why are you using it?

By: ashif sayani

ashif sayani — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 06:21:54 +0000

I 100% agree with you that it sucks have to type code that doesn’t need it. After using Ruby for the last little while (coming from a C# background) and enjoying the productivity a weakly-typed language gives me, I feel the same as you do, that Adobe is going the wrong way on this.

By: Theo

Theo — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:10:58 +0000

I must admit that I didn’t know about the strong typing compiler optimizations. If I had, I would have chosen my words differently as to avoid the confusion. The optimizations are, however, not relevant in this context as they apply to typing instance variables and method parameters, and not local variables, which is what I’m talking about here.

It’s not typing as such that I’m against, it’s how the compiler forces me to type code which doesn’t need typing. The compiler can do all those optimizations without me having to explicitly type local variables. Check out type inference on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_inference

ashif: “Warning: var ‘list’ has no type declaration.” Your code compiles, with a warning, and it’s that warning that I’m against.

By: ashif sayani

ashif sayani — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 18:48:04 +0000

You can still do this:

        var list = ["hello","world"] 
        list.push(",ashif")
        Alert.show( list[2].toString())

AS3 can stil be used as a weakly-typed, dynamic language. Adobe just doesn't recommend using it that way for performance reasons. They say the VM runs up to 10x faster with strongly typed, static code.

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:49:50 +0000

I disagree with everything except your last line:

Long live :*

is the bomb!

By: Paulius Uza

Paulius Uza — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:31:25 +0000

You should have a read on actionscript 3 performance tuning using strong typing - it explains a lot http://www.onflex.org/ted/2006/09/max-actionscript-3-performance-tuning.php