We always like Actionscript

[Ebaristo]

Hi Adobe,

I just would like to say that we always like Actionscript.

We like actionscript packages over javascript various stupid require's or bundling techniques.

We are perhaps not "educated enough" to enter in a debate like Prototype based language vs Class based one. But we know how "extends" and "implements" works in Actionscript. We have learned over years to use them efficiently.

We do not really appreciate all these js tools with funny names : bower, gulp, grunt, browserify, yeoman, and what else ? For us, that doesn't make a real project just a small part of it.

We are not all "engineers" with a massive knowledge of development patterns and language theory but we really appreciate actionscript's "just enough" language features to express our creativity.

We like Actionscript's efficiency. We are happy when a 3D web app we make runs in an Explorer 8 like in a recent Chrome. We like how Stage 3D compensate the lack of hardware acceleration.

We know how Actionscript can be stable and fast used with some experience.

And always we make enough money to continue our lives using Actionscript daily.

But we, the actionscript developers, need to be enlightened about the future of Flash Player.

Adobe has an optimistic road map, updated on February 14th 2014. But this document starts to be outdated.

In our nightmares, we see the next version of Chrome bundled without Flash Player or a Safari requiring scary security confirmations before launching our web tools.

If you can't update the Roadmap, could you at least say us in few words :

- Internally (in Adobe), do you consider Flash Player as a dying / depreciated technology ?

- How many people are still working on Adobe Flash Player ? How many of them believe that flash player has a future on desktop browsers ?

- Will we see new real versions with new competitive features which will always make flash as an "unreplaceable" ? Or just slow maintenance updates.

And the biggest question is, why don't you make a cross-compiler like TypeScript or Dart ?

Don't you know that the day you release a cross-compiler, the simplest one (without including all the default packages), you'll have immediately hundreds of thousands (even millions) of people which will start developing with it.

We know you have many good reasons. But we just need that you share your thoughts with the community.

Thank you all for your hard work.

Baris

[Jeff__Ward]

I love actionscript, too!  And the flash API, tools and ecosystem overall.  Why?  'Cause code+art=magic of course!  😃

[chris.campbell]

Hello,

I do realize that the roadmap is out of date.  I'll try and fix that soon.  In the meantime, I recommend listening to a couple of recent Flash Online Conferences that were held this year.  In them we talk about our roadmap, recent features, and additional 3rd party framework improvements.

Flash Online Conference #9 with Adobe

Flash Online Conference 10

Thanks,

Chris

[zhang_cheng]

hi Baris. In fact  you know the answers  right ? just let it go.

[Ebaristo]

Zhang, I know the reality, but I refuse to be a sheep following the movement, knowing that I will be butchered sooner or later. Despite all that can be said of Javascript, I do not think this is the future of the web. Hence the proliferation of new languages and tools that try to compensate for its weaknesses until we have a better solution. And Adobe who achieved a revenue of one billion (while expecting less) in 2014 Q3, doesn't have any budget to create a simple cross-compiler ?

Chris, I have listened to the conferences and I am very familiar with certain third parties like Ariel Nehmad's wonderful Flare3D since its beginnings. I'm sorry but, objectively, the number of projects, despite their quality, is really low compared to the hustle and bustle that we have in javascript. This is understandable because, today, the actionscript projects can't find any funding. Even the most open minded investor believes the "yeah but it's flash" slogan. In result project owners searching for money have to "let it go" with javascript.

You have the biggest user base. You have one of the biggest developper community of the Internet. You have all the keys and the intelligence to just kill Dart or Typescript in months. You should make the actionscript cross-compiler.

What do you think Chris, perhaps it's so late and we should just let it go ?