Why macromedia... for love of god, why ?

Okay, so I decided to give flash programming a try. Around 2000 or so, I took a look AS, I was not impressed by what I saw. Now, in 2006 I took another look and though "hey, this is pretty nice". Thus, I thought I would whip up a few fun games with it. But as I am trying to do that, my rage at macromedia/AS is growing. I have extensive programmin experience in C, C++, Java, PHP and .NET and I am saddened by the fact that the flash platform and AS is the standard in which we must write "real time" interactive content for the web. Macromedia has done a huge disservice to programmer kind by making the flash platform in a way which requires you to engade in all kinds of wierd faggotry of the "Action Script" language to make programs in it.

Discuss.

ActionScript is a better language than JavaScript. Here is why:

- Static typing rather than pig dynamic typing
- Decent OO support rather than bullshit funcperative programming
- All the JIT support that JavaScript is now getting, except it's actually consistent across browsers
- Similarly, a runtime that's actually consistent across browsers

Not surprisingly, the worst parts of ActionScript only exist because of its unfortunate requirement of ECMAScript compatibility:
- No private constructors
- No abstract classes
- Incredibly stupid auto-hoisting that promotes variables inside loop blocks up to the scope of the enclosing function

In conclusion, JavaScript is terrible, and ActionScript is better than expected.

>>25
You know, your first example is the only one worth supporting. All laptops made in the past >ten years have OpenGL. Most smartphones these days have OpenGL ES. The iPhone, all Android phones, and all recent Nokia and Windows Mobile phones have it. Did you know the iPhone 3GS even has a programmable pipeline?

Wait a few years and there won't exist a freaking wrist watch without OpenGL.

//Javascript:
var foo = "dongs";
//Java:
String foo = "dongs";
//Actionscript:
var foo:String = "dongs";

PIG DISGUSTING