Moving AS3 forward?

Question

Hi I use AS3 quite a lot for work, but I come from a Java/C/C++ education and find the language quite restrictive.

There seems to be two fundamental camps in the AS3 wor

Answer 1

I think ActionScript is gonna evolve towards C#. I do so because I also believe that we gonna see alot more big websites made entirely in Flash/Silverlight. And once you you have a real team with graphic artist and coders working together, C# will save a lot of money. There are better tools and posibilities for developing and debugging more complex applications in C#.

You can see it with the new Flash Catalyst / Flash Builder Premium setup, where graphics and code finally is properly seperated while still allowing the artists to "do their thing".

I am sure Adobe is also gonna try to keep their userbase of designers with some script knowledge. But they can still write in AS2 if they wish. That is properly why they (as far as I know) are gonna keep the Flash Professional IDE around, and with slightly more advanced graphic tools than Catalyst.

So when AS4 is gonna come, I would exspect to see things like generics and method overloading. But it is properly never gonna be C#.

As you might guess I am in the technical camp ;) But working with this professionally, I just can not see a future where the same people design and code. So I do not think Adobe should take the "creative" camps opinion on ActionScript into account. You would not ask a coder how colour selection should work either ;)