Using Ruby in place of Actionscript

Question

I love flash (design tools, stage / layout concepts, etc.),
but I hate actionscript. I've been a programmer for about 10 years
now, programming in everything from C to C#, java, php, perl, ruby,
and actionscript. Actionscript is by far my least favorite of the
group. It is a clumsy language (just have a look at the way
actionscript 2 handled method closures on callbacks) and I'd prefer
to use another scripting language in place of it for my flash
development. Ruby would be an excellent replacement, offering
everything actionscript has to offer (object oriented, event
handling, etc.) with a number of additional features that come
through ruby core and the ruby gems (excellent date and time
libraries, database libraries, file handling libraries, etc.).
Does anyone with an in-depth knowledge of actionscript and
flash know what it would take to achieve some sort of common
language API that would allow such a substitution? If the ruby on
rails guys came across a solution allowing them to leverage the
benefits of ruby (superior language to actionscript) with the
benefits of the flash platform (superior visual control to
html/ajax), flash would be unstoppable.

Answer 1

ryanmohr,
> The actionscript developers seem to enjoy leaving the
> core libs unfinished so others can produce utility
classes
> to finish the job they should have done on their own.
Again, fair enough. :) On the other hand, regarding the
missing String
manipulation utilities ...
> but why not just offer it built in? It would take what,
a
> full five minutes for them to write?
... hey, if all it takes is five minutes of someone's time,
why not craft
together a utils library and share it? You could make a
positive
difference. :) In that line of thinking, it's not even the
size that
matters. Moses Gunesh, for example, put together an elaborate
and popular
tweening engine, Fuse (
http://www.mosessupposes.com/Fuse/),
and shared the
wealth. Note: by proximity to a casual statement on a String
utils class,
I risk implying that Fuse is just a five-minute exercise in
simplicity,
which is not *at all* the case. I'm only pointing out that
good libraries
can make a helpful difference in people's workaday lives. If
the
functionality you want isn't available, roll your own! :)
> You are correct that there is no arguing taste, but if
you
> took the time to learn ruby well you would come back
> to actionscript very disappointed.
Even if I do "appear to be very knowledgable ... [on] the
inner-working
of Flash itself," I don't claim to know much on the
inner-working of Adobe.
I guess it depends on one's point of view -- and to my point
of view,
ActionScript keeps getting better and better.
I think there's more than just taste to consider. For the
type of
programming I like to do -- where the end result is (ideally,
to me) making
cartoon characters move in response to user input, Ruby might
leave me dry
(Flash is strongly suited to vector graphics, sound effects,
video footage,
etc.). My multimedia career started with Macromedia Director,
whose
programming language is Lingo, a very AppleScript-like
language. My guess
is that you wouldn't much care for it at all. From there, I
moved,
reluctantly at first, to Flash, where my programming skill
grew in-step with
the increasing maturity of ActionScript. There was a time,
essentially AS1,
when ActionScript was practically identical to JavaScript,
and I enjoyed
getting to know both. JavaScript led me to regular
expressions, which
fascinated me for fully two years before I got any good at
it. I'm pleased
as punch that AS3 supports regex natively. AS2 brought the
"class"
keyword -- and OOP in general -- to the forefront of my mind,
which led to
brief excursions into Java and C#. I've played a bit with
Python, PHP, and
a handful of other languages. To a certain extent,
programming is
programming: it's the syntax that changes, not the challenge
and fun of
problem solving within a given set of constraints (like the
language
itself). In that regard, it doesn't really matter to me what
language I'm
using, so much as a general answer to the question, "Does
this platform
allow me -- encourage me -- to participate in the kinds of
projects I like?"
Even if I found another language, such as Ruby, more
convenient, it might
not facilitate the sorts of projects I enjoy. To go out on a
limb and make
an extreme example, Ruby, for all its elegance, wouldn't help
me if I had a
passion for programming LCD wristwatches. Because I "grew up"
on
ActionScript, I also have something of a nostalgia for its
particular
quirks. I personally happen to find ActionScript more
palatable than
Lingo -- so I can see some of your points.
> The more I get to know actionscript 3 in detail the more
> I'm convinced those that adamantly support it just don't
> know any better.
I don't know if you consider me one of those who adamantly
supports AS3
or not, and it doesn't really matter. You yourself said that
ActionScript
isn't a bad language -- only that Ruby, in your estimation,
is that much
better. Well, good! I'm glad you've found a language that
pleases your
palate. :) If you were to change your mind and decide, after
all, that
ActionScript actually is a "bad language," it wouldn't be any
skin off my
nose. See, if I step away from ActionScript toward something
else, it means
I'm stepping away from a platform that has continued to
intrigue me for
eight years. If ActionScript were still where it was in the
Flash 4 days,
I'd probably be whistling a different tune. ;)
David Stiller
Adobe Community Expert
Dev blog,
http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."