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Why not embrace ActionScript 3 as a replacement for JavaScript?

3 points by algolove ↗ HN
I've been wondering for some time why AS3 has not been considered for the next generation of Javascript? It's ECMA script, it's statically typed, very well documented. It works incredibly well for display, models and controllers. Supports many types of data. Every piece of interactive web during the last century used AS3. So why not?

5 comments

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omeid2
Politics, mostly.

The same reason it took (takes?) asm.js to move towards a virtual-machine with a standard bytecode so you can pick your language of choice.

algolove
Do you know if this was ever considered?
S4M
I started a project in ActionScript3, and the language felt like an inferior version of Java, with static typing, everything is in the class, but without the generic. I know my experience with it is very short, but it was not pleasant to work with it. There wasn't a good free IDE support as well, and it was not possible to debug a program under Linux.
Millennium
AS3 is an implementation, not a standard.

Large parts of AS3's feature set actually were considered for standardization, back in the days of the "ECMAScript 4" standard (in quotes because it was never released). That standard was abandoned, due to differences some dismiss as politics and others claim were due to implementation and complexity issues.

Pr0ducer
"Every piece of interactive web during the last century used AS3." I'm pretty sure this is not true.