October 27, 2003
"Pragmatic" is the Word
Surprise, surprise. The person I always suspected to be a secret consultant behind Macromedia's decision to go very strict in AS2.0 turns out to be a follower of "old school" actionscript. In the comments to his latest post on waxpraxis.org Branden Hall promotes the "pragmatic" approach to Flash coding. Quote: "As for AS 2.0 - I really don't use it much yet. It's nice, but for the most part just syntactic sugar ."
Posted at October 27, 2003 11:22 AM | Further reading
I think there are many developers that resist to abandon AS 1.0 that easilly. Branden is just one of them.
I think that having AS 2.0 now makes it easy to put AS 1.0 in perspective.
Cheers.
That post has gained a snowball effect full of AS 1.0 developers. Its a tough place to post about the new direction of Macromedia. However, I too thought that Branden would have been a forward push to the new syntax leaving the older in need of work prototype behind. I don't take to the whole "syntactical sugar". Its much more, but there were many who agreed, and thus far, Im a little shaken at how the community is handling the two different syntax. One thing is for sure. MM will be going towards AS 2.0.. It's all about evolution. Branden, How could you expect us to take the "syntactical sugar" lightly? I know that you know its more than that, and that the phrase does not do AS 2.0 justice. Also, remember, a lot of developers follow you. When they hear "syntactical sugar" they are thinking that its a light enhancement. I would hate for that term to get associated with AS 2.0.
Personally, i love AS2.0. Previously, i had used some OOP, but found the whole prototype/object.registerclass/initclip thing too messy, and usually preferred to do things with straight linear code.
i think the ease of use of real class files will open the door to many more people using oop in flash.
