While at Devoxx 2008 Chet Haase and I sat down with The Java Posse for an interview about Flex, integrating Flex with Spring, Flex Gumbo, and various other topics. You can listen to the interview via The Java Posse Podcast – episode #242, watch it on parleys.com (perhaps even using their awesome AIR app) or watch it right here. Let me know what you think.
Java Posse Interview at Devoxx 2008 with Chet Haase
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7 Comments
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 snub to developers.
Hi Natasha,
I’m not sure which one of us said that but I’m a little confused about your response. Are there things in AS3 that you think should be changed? What are those things? Have you filed feature requests for them? I don’t think we were saying that there wouldn’t be incremental changes to the language. All programming languages have that. For instance Vector was new in Flash Player 10. But in the foreseeable future there won’t be any massive changes like we made from AS2 to AS3.
-James
> Are there things in AS3 that you think should be changed?
I love AS3 and it was a vast improvement on AS2. I don’t think there is anything wrong with AS3; it just doesn’t go far enough.
> What are those things?
I’m not here to make a feature list request. I came here to protest the statement made on the Java Posse. Nevertheless, I’m sure you already know what people want since it’s written all over blog-land. For example, private constructors and function overloading to name just two of many.
> But in the foreseeable future there won’t be any massive
> changes like we made from AS2 to AS3.
To be honest, what a huge disappointment! There you are, positioning Flash as a serious platform for business and application development and here we are with a semi-scripting language. Maybe I should abandon business-critical applications and accept more jobs doing banners and slideshows.
Hi Natasha,
I don’t think anyone would disagree that there are some inadequacies in the current AS3 language. And I think Adobe will be doing things to try to address those. For instance private constructors seems like an easy change that could be made to the language without a significant overhaul. However I don’t think that those who have built the thousands of production mission critical Flex applications would agree that these language inadequacies are a significant reason to ditch the platform. Remember that Java also has some language inadequacies and it is still used for countless business-critical applications.
-James
> However I don’t think that those who have built the thousands of production mission
> critical Flex applications would agree that these language inadequacies are a significant
> reason to ditch the platform.
No one was talking about ditching the platform. I said no such thing. I was talking about strengthening it, not ditching it.
> Remember that Java also has some language inadequacies and it is still used for
> countless business-critical applications.
Java is *already* in another league in terms of language features. The basics are all there already. That’s not the case with Actionscript. AS3 is competent but not great. It’s just a matter of how hard, how safe, how much effort, how reliable. When building large and complex apps, language features can make the biggest difference. That’s why languages have features that Actionscript is missing and that’s why people use them.
> For instance private constructors seems like an easy change that could be
> made to the language without a significant overhaul.
That would be welcome, but it just wouldn’t do it. There are many other features lacking such as abstract classes. Of course, it’s possible to do anything with AS3, but would I want to do it with AS3? At the moment there isn’t much choice, but that will change.
What the RIA world badly needs is more choice. Sorry, but when Adobe went into hyperdrive to get developers from the Java world, we came. You don’t then just decide that you want to ’stop’ simply because a ton of people were upset about the release of AS3 and you don’t want to upset them with further changes to the language.
One of the problems with coming into the Adobe camp is that Adobe is living in two worlds. It can’t please both. We don’t begrudge those people who are upset at the release of AS3. Different people have different needs. But what’s happening is that we end up inheriting Adobe’s old baggage. Why don’t you give them a more appropriate scripting language that preprocesses to AS? Like Groovy preprocesses to Java for example?
You need to sort this out. For you, the statement “we don’t want to change the language” was one small remark in a long interview. For us, it was a big, loud, clear, red warning flag that signalled your loyalties.
Hi Natasha,
Remember that AS3 does have some great language features that we all wish Java had like Function Closures, Properties, and optional dynamic typing. Both AS3 and Java are not perfect. Hopefully they will learn things from each other and continue to evolve.
-James
> Remember that AS3 does have some great language features that we all wish Java
> had like Function Closures, Properties, and optional dynamic typing.
Properties in AS3 are done *really* well. Function closures are useful. Dynamic typing… isn’t that just cruel? Great for a while until the inevitable tears begin to flow.
Anyhow, I’m not attacking your platform. I love your platform or I wouldn’t use it every hour of every day of the year, but I am now very disappointed. Far from running down your platform, I would actually like to see AS become even stronger because I will be able to work faster and even more reliably. That now seems unlikely, bar being tossed the occasional bone. Looks like we’re stuck with one foot in touchy-feely-fluffy-scriptyness.
You know, when you (Adobe) have publicity drives to get people over from other languages and platforms, just because those people write amazing stuff doesn’t necessarily mean they are happy with the means for doing it. Sometimes they do it in spite of you, not because of you. Many of those people are software engineers. Where they came from, they were using language features which evolved to solve real-world problems. Scripty-fluffy-niceness is acceptable only temporarily, and only because Adobe has no real competitor quite yet. If someone puts out a viable Java alternative, much as I like your platform, I’ll be gone in a heartbeat. So will my colleagues and associates.
> Hopefully they will learn things from each other and continue to evolve.
Could you tell us how we factor ‘hope’ into our planning? I was kind of hoping that hope wouldn’t come into it. Hope shouldn’t come into it.
Having tens or hundreds of ‘pseudo’ abstract classes peppered with throw statements and messages… “This is an abstract class and cannot be directly instantiated” … is just plain nasty. Having singleton or multiton objects which can be created using the ‘new’ operator is even nastier. Having a multitude of these and other things all possible in the same language makes life difficult and error prone when working on large team projects with hundreds of thousands++ of lines of code, or when selling class libraries and components to be used by third parties. Does Adobe get it? Adobe wanted this and yet it seems paralysed to know what to do with these people. “Hey everyone, build yet another Twitter app. Write a Facebook plugin’.
Does Adobe have any faith in its own platform? Does Adobe know who and what it wants? Maybe it does, and it doesn’t seem to be us!