MTASC and ActionScript 3.0
Thursday, 10 November 2005Nicolas Cannasse has announced that he has no intention of adding ActionScript 3.0 / AVM2 support to MTASC. Instead he had announced that he’s working on a new language, codenamed Flexible, with the aim of being able to use the same language for coding Flash, JavaScript and his own NekoVM server-side platform.
Looking at the current specification I can see that Nicolas is planning to build several useful features into the language. Class templates and enumerated types both are things I miss from my C++ days, and the rich type system is something that looks interesting. Aside from that, however, it looks remarkably like Java or ActionScript 3.0, and I don’t know if the features listed are desirable enough to make learning yet another language worthwhile.
What I do know is that it takes a long time for any new language to reach a critical mass of developers. No matter how good a language might be, many companies (mine included) will be reluctant to consider it whilst it languishes in obscurity. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between. Almost all of the languages we use today enjoyed a slow steady climb towards critical mass, but for every one that made it there are far more that fell by the wayside.
Which fate awaits this new language? Only time will tell.
I think this is a mistake that will somewhat limit
Brian Ferris | Thursday, 10 November 2005 | 6:22 pmI think this is a mistake that will somewhat limit the utility of what is otherwise a great tool. This conversation came up during the open source flash conference too, and while some people had the attitude of “what’s one more language”(after all, syntax isn’t usually that different) others(myself included) questioned whether the extra features in the language would really be that overwhelming a benefit to justify both the time spent learning it and the switch to a language that you won’t be able to ever use with MMC(Flash Studio).
Brian: I agree. This is actually one half of a
Steve | Thursday, 10 November 2005 | 6:57 pmBrian: I agree. This is actually one half of a two-part post. I’m going to try and rally enough developers to port MTASC to a language that has more active developers. That way we’re not so dependant on Nicolas having the time and/or motivation to add new features (like AS3 parsing) or fix bugs.
It does not seem good idea implement one more new
Max | Tuesday, 09 May 2006 | 3:37 pmIt does not seem good idea implement one more new language that force each time more another padronization. I agree with you about companies… It is obvious that Actionscript 3.0 backwards benefits and not to follow this is to minimize the Mtasc uses.