Guy Morton Oh, I haven't seen your previous reply. Sorry. AS3 and h.246 codec support were available in 2005... just so you know. Also, there's a free version of Visual Studio (which I like and use a lot, and the same way you can say that MS development tools are free), however, this wasn't my point - Apple profits from selling their OS / software - the more developers see it profitable to develop against their API, the more it will pay back to Apple because it will escalate like this: you need software - you need the OS to run it, you get the OS, you find out there's more software you want and so on. This is good for Apple, but is bad for me personally - I don't like their technology (I'm a long time Mac user, but long time ago - I've used to work on G3-G4 computers). What their success will mean for me is that I would rather have to adapt to the language that I don't like, or I will have less job opportunities in the language I do like. For my manager that would mean that if the company wants to support multiple platforms they would need to hire more personal, buy more software (btw, since when Mac OS became a freeware?). Apple doesn't care about that (not that others care a lot, but that's not the point).
Why do I think that HTML and JavaScript are dead for *web application *(if your mail doesn't support HTML formating, web application is in <strong></strong>). This is because it is: - compiled in browser (nothing you can do with it, the JavaScript not compiled in browser is ActionScript, well, at least the version implemented by Mozilla). - inefficient rendering model. It is not because of the implementation, it is engraved in the design, HTML / SVG are bad for describing graphics, HTML is for text. Using HTML to make graphic content is similar to making typography in MSWord, or book illustration in Excell ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YG_WWZYqUs ) I find it awesome btw :) - Absolutely no tools for basic optimizations, everything in the language is reflection -> zillions of loops where you could use references or pointers... JavaScript performs many orders of magnitude worse than native code, and it is not only because of how it is implemented, it is the "feature" of the language, it can never work even close to what your computer may do. The side effects, which are not inherent to the technology, but also associated with it are these: most of the JavaScript code I've seen so far is a very low grade code, be it JQuery, Prototype and so on - it's lame... :) It looks even worse then other mature now languages looked like back in 90-s... 90% of all HTML pages found on the web don't validate in the free validators provided by Mozilla and W3C. They are bad software! All current browsers except FireFox are running JavaScript 1.5 (or somewhat compatible JScript 5.5) version - do you know when this standard was established? It is even funny to think about those tools as real programming tools. It is only because of the browsers war that this technology still survives, it should've been dead decades ago and take it's proper place next to Turbo Basic in the computer science museum :) The high demand and no alternative is what is keeping it alive. The technology is crap, it's amazing how one can be so blind to not see that. I am not a Flash fan, actually, I'm waiting for NaCl to get strength. My greatest ambition was to design an on-line video editor. It didn't quite work in Flash, but, if I think about JavaScript... oh well... :) What I mean is - web applications should be applications, JavaScript is a tool to script an application, but it's not a tool for writing one. Or, just to give you another example - World of Warcraft :) It is a web application if you want! It connects to the internet and it uses the same computer, that your browser does! Would you think of making that in HTML5 and JavaScript? Why do you think it's ridiculous? It's not, it's basically the same technology! :) And that's where internet is heading to - applications, not pages. Regarding what you say about "those tools": well, you see, most developers are unaware of them. It may never appear to the AS3 people how much they are missing when they don't have generics, templates, inlining and so on. While, I think that, this is mutually dependent - if you have smarter developer in your community, it is more likely to make better products - better products will make joining the community more attractive for others - you will get better developers on your side. As a side effect, the community members may contribute to the development of the technology as a whole. Sorry for the flame, and if I made you tired reading this. I really hope you or anyone reading this doesn't take this as a personal offence. After all it's a metal box and the small lights flushing inside of it :) PS. In my previous post there was a mistake: He never says that h.264 codec is proprietary, but after reading what he says you may think it is. Should read: He never says that h.264 codec is proprietary, but after reading what he says you may think it is not. *(however, it is not OSS)*
