So ECMAScript, ActionScript, blah blah blah. You already know the news. No need to restate it.
What I’m honestly wondering is, why should I care? I’m not being flip about it, I really want to know if AS3 being based on some standard or not really makes any real difference in any way, shape or form. It seems mostly like a marketing tag line. “ActionScript is Green! ActionScript is Open Source! ActionScript is based on ECMAScript! No baby seals were killed in the making of ActionScript!” But who cares? People who hate Flash will continue to find reasons to hate it no matter how open, standard, world-peace-generating Adobe makes it.
ActionScript is no less useful to me today than it was last week. Most clients could probably care less. I don’t think Silverlight or any other “competing” technologies are any more standards compliant than ActionScript now is. And if they were, that wouldn’t carry any weight at all in terms of anyone I know switching.
Furthermore, it seems like Adobe was the driving force behind most of the features that were going into the spec, and ActionScript was the only language even remotely compliant. So what good is a standard if there’s only one thing that complies to the standard? OK, JavaScript would supposedly eventually maybe comply to the same standard. But I’m still not sure what I’m missing out on now that that is not going to happen.
I guess I could see an argument in that if ActionScript is based on a standard, then Adobe can’t do whatever they want with it, add features in that theoretically give them advantages, etc. But to be honest, I even see that as a plus point. Maybe now we can have private constructors!
Again, though, I’m no expert in these matters. So, in all honesty, if someone has some info on why being standards-compliant is of any benefit other than a sticker on a box, please share.