Ruby integrated with Flash in place of actionscript

[Ryan Mohr]

I love flash (there are just some things you can't do with html/ajax),
but I hate actionscript. After programming in a superior language like
ruby, I have a hard time coming back to actionscript and all its
clumsiness.

So the question...

Does anyone know what it would take to achieve some sort of common
language API that would allow us to use ruby in place of actionscript
when developing flash applications?

 

[byronsalty]

I love flash (there are just some things you can't do with html/ajax),
but I hate actionscript. After programming in a superior language like
ruby, I have a hard time coming back to actionscript and all its
clumsiness.

So the question...

Does anyone know what it would take to achieve some sort of common
language API that would allow us to use ruby in place of actionscript
when developing flash applications?

Assuming that all flash players still run ActionScript1 you could
probably tweak one of these Ruby to Javascript converters to be a Ruby
to ActionScript converter. Then at least you could write in Ruby and
convert before publishing.

The alternative would be to write a Ruby interpreter in ActionScript.
Probably would learn a lot but it would take a lot of work and would
probably be dead slow.

ActionScript1 is not so bad though is it? It's basically Javascript -
everyone's choice for client side coding

- Byron

 

[Ryan Mohr]

ActionScript1 is not so bad though is it? It's basically Javascript -
everyone's choice for client side coding

Nither are that bad, but would you rather develop a large object
oriented application in javascript or ruby? I very much would prefer
ruby.

 

[SonOfLilit]

If by everyone you mean netscape, then JS IS everyone's choice for
client side development. Otherwise, it's simply the only option that
everyone supported (at one point, when M$ had a huge percentage of the
market, vbscript was also an option, but that is one of the worst
possible ones, so...)

JS is a great engine for a language with awfully designed syntax and APIs.

Soon, Silverlight will support developing flash-like applications with
Ruby (IronRuby), but I probably wouldn't trust microsoft with my dev
platform if I could choose.

Aur

 

[Ryan Mohr]

Soon, Silverlight will support developing flash-like applications with

Ruby (IronRuby), but I probably wouldn't trust microsoft with my dev
platform if I could choose.

Exactly. I like Adobe (have family that works there so I can get killer
deals) but I hate actionscript enough that I'd consider Silverlight if
it allowed me to use ruby. Most of the work I do is in ruby on rails,
with a few flash components tossed in the mix so I'd prefer to keep it
all in ruby if I could.

 

[brabuhr]

That said, maybe you should look here:
http://alph.rubyforge.org/

Looks like their wiki has been spammed out of useful existence.

 

[Aaron Smith]

Have you heard of Flash 9 and Actionscript 3 yet? AS3 is far superior to
AS1 / AS2 and is so similar to Java I swear I'm writing Java when I
write AS3.

 

[Ryan Mohr]

Have you heard of Flash 9 and Actionscript 3 yet? AS3 is far superior to
AS1 / AS2 and is so similar to Java I swear I'm writing Java when I
write AS3.

Yeah, AS3 is what prompted me to begin my search. Granted it is a large
improvement over AS2, I was not as impressed with it as I had hoped to
be. Java's great for building reliable desktop apps, but who wants
another java for building highly interactive UIs? I sure don't. A
terse script-like language with great OO support (such as ruby) seems a
much better fit for a dynamic UI like flash. It's the little things in
ruby that win me over versus actionscript. Shorter syntax (while still
intuitive), better loop constructs with arrays (each_with_index, map,
etc.), and better library support (compare actionscript's date and time
library with ruby's -- 5.days_ago, you can never get something that
sweet in actionscript).

Actionscript now even separates null from undefined. Why not just
choose one and stick with it to prevent confusion?

 

[Giles Bowkett]

I love flash (there are just some things you can't do with html/ajax),
but I hate actionscript. After programming in a superior language like
ruby, I have a hard time coming back to actionscript and all its
clumsiness.

So the question...

Does anyone know what it would take to achieve some sort of common
language API that would allow us to use ruby in place of actionscript
when developing flash applications?

Read "Code Generation In Action." The techniques he uses to
autogenerate boilerplate EJB can be appropriated for the crime against
nature that is OO ActionScript.

Theoretically, you could implement Prototype in ActionScript 3,
although it wouldn't necessarily be easy.