Re: [Fsfe-uk] Flash problems are bad programmers - Macromedia

[Alex Hudson]

On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 19:14 +0000, Robin Green wrote:
> Java fan chipping in here. There is actually a key difference between
> Java and Flash here, I think. Java now has a free implementation which
> can now finally run some applets:
> 
>  http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gcjwebplugin/
> 
> There's no Free Flash implementation yet, is there?

There are a couple, actually.

Thing is, it's kind of missing the point - Java and Flash have entirely
different markets, and I suspect the market for Java interfaces plugged
into browsers died quite some time ago (I guess they still live on in
content management, but...). Java is just a completely different
technology to Flash.

I think the Macromedia guy was probably smoking something, tbh. If they
want to take over the Java applet, fine, let them - I don't think they
will get much competition. I suspect Flex is actually aimed more at
XUL/XAML type markets. 

As for the ECMA-262 claim, I don't know. They used to say that
Coldfusion script was essentially Javascript. I think they massively
underestimate how sophisticated a language Javascript actually is...
I can't say how close ActionScript comes to Javascript, but it wouldn't
surprise me if there were significant divergence, and what he actually
means is "it looks a bit like it on a simple level".

Cheers,

Alex.

PS. they may be right about programmers - most Flash isn't generated by
programmers. I guess they're actually thinking more about the Generator
market (i.e., Flash as a sophisticated UI for data applications). Dunno;
didn't think they were really making huge headway with that...