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Comment by bsimpson | Hacker News Reader

Really? Go is on there, but ActionScript is not?

I realize that the future of the Flash Platform is in doubt, but Flash is still a great choice for a lot of things, like:

- This language is good for beginners.

- This language is well documented.

- I find this language easy to prototype in.

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Why would a beginner want to learn a dying technologlash unless you were writing games, Flash was never the right answer.

I do write games, and Actionscript (3, not 2) is a lovely language.

Since I specifically excluded you, what's your point?

That Actionscript is still a useful language, within it's niche. And since this post is all about finding the right language for particular niches I don't see why you'd argue against it's inclusion.

I'd already made that point by excluding games from my statement. When someone says except for X, bla bla bla, you don't respond by saying yea but I do X.

But you can respond by going "But it's silly to exclude X from discussion". Which is why I have been trying (and, evidently failing) to convey.

I didn't exclude X from the discussion, I excluded it from my criticism; that means I already agree X is good for games and there's no reason to bring it up.

That's an argument for including Actionscript in the list. That way a beginner might know the following:

"This language has a niche in which it is great"

"This language has a niche outside of which I would not use it"

"I enjoy playing with this language but would never use it for "real code""

"I am sometimes embarrassed to admit to my peers that I know this language"

"The thought that I may still be using this language in twenty years time fills me with dread"

Although I no longer use it, I learned to program with ActionScript. I studied art and had no background in programming, but I found it fun to play with Flash and AS. For example, getting a webcam involved is a couple of lines of code. Now you can do basic motion detection and all kinds of cool stuff. It is a good way to learn programming as everything is included in one package. You can use the Flash GUI to make a simple interface for your application.

Python and Ruby fit into all of those categories. And I'd guaranteed that in 5 years they'll be even more popular, easier to hire for and the languages will be more polished.

Can ActionScript say that?

I think there are Statements about those things precisely.

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