Since I am pretty sure they won't actually post my comments to this article -> http://peter.michaux.ca/articles/javascript-is-dead-long-live-javascript AND over the past 4 years I have grown tired of the religion among JavaScript ninjas against Flash. And yes, I finally created a blog to post my opinions because I didn't think my voice would be heard.
I am posting my response here:
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I'm going to get beat up here but...why compile to JavaScript? Shouldn't there be a cross-browser VM that allows true compilation first? I'm no JavaScript pro but 'compiling' to an interpreted, text format doesn't allow for optimizations provided by the JVM, CLR and yes...Flash.
I said it. Most JavaScript lovers hate Flash, but the truth of this is, it runs more consistently across browsers and performs WAY better than JavaScript because it is running on a VM. ActionScript3 is a much richer language than JavaScript. And after trying out several JavaScript based UI frameworks, I'm still convinced the Flex framework is better. It scares JavaScript ninjas because Adobe 'owns' it and allows nubes to build UIs that are richer and faster than uber skilled, smart JavaScript developers wasting their time with 'if(ie8) { ... }'.
Regardless your hate for Flash. That's religious and should be kept away from open minded technical discussion. Who cares about he 'next' web language? What is the next VM that allows powerful languages without all of JavaScript's baggage prosper.
Having JavaScript only in the browser is NOT good for web development. Having Java only on the server is bad now. But with a powerful, VM, we are no longer constrained by this. Building other languages on top of JavaScript is like building other JVM languages on top of the JVM from 1.0. You are building your castle in the sand.
Get a good foundation that is built into ALL browsers. I'm not even sure HTML5 will be that. But I've already said too much.
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