Dynamic language

[James Miller]

On 16 March 2012 12:05, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote in message
> news:mailman.712.1331843803.4860.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>> On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 03:24:24PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> [...]
>>> - If you can stomach the indent-scoping, Python is very well-regarded
>>> and has a lot of fancy advanced features.
>>
>> I used to despise Python's indent-scoping too, though since then I've
>> had some opportunity to use Python for build scripts (google for SCons),
>> and I have to say that it certainly has its own kind of beauty to it.
>> You never have to worry about closing blocks in if statements and the
>> like, for example, and you never have subtle bugs like:
>>
>> auto func(bool x) {
>> int y=0;
>> if (x)
>> y = 1;
>> writeln("x is true");
>>
>> return y;
>> }
>>
>> But I certainly sympathize with the WAT sentiment when one first learns
>> that Python has indent scoping. :-)
>>
>
> I've used some Python, and I've done a fair amount of SPIN (Parallax's
> Propeller microcontroller) which also does indent-scoping. Granted, SPIN is
> a lousy language (the Propeller is awesome though) regardless of its
> indent-scoping, but still, even the indent-scoping *itself* never ceased
> being irritating for me, for various different reasons.
>
> I do like the indent-scoping in YAML, though. But that's very different:
> It's optional in YAML and YAML's only a data langauge, not a programming
> language.
>
> As far as SCons, though, I haven't done much with it, but I have looked into
> it. Even though it techically is Python, I'd argue that its charter leaves
> it somewhat more similar to YAML than actually writing a whole program in
> Python.
>
>>
>> [...]
>>> - If you're looking for the most painful dynamic experince imaginable,
>>> ActionScript2 should be at the top of your list. Make sure to use
>>> all-Adobe tools, and the newest versions of each, so the whole
>>> experience will be *truly* unbearable.
>>
>> Shouldn't that be ActionScript3?
>>
>
> I've never used ActionScript3. I've heared it's better, but I have no idea
> how much better.
>
> ActionScript2 is truly horrid though. Almost any error that isn't an
> outright syntax error is *completely* ignored. So if you sneeze wrong near
> one end of the codebase, then something clear over in another section will
> just...act wrong, for no apperent reason. I've wasted hours on things like
> trying to figure out why an image or text wasn't showing up, or was
> displayed wrong, just becase I declared some *other* object or array and
> forgot to manually initialize it with a "new MyClass()" or a "new Array()".
> That's right: you can dereference null, but it isn't an error: it's a no-op
> that triggers a cascade of no-ops. (And shit, even the heavily-static D lets
> you declare an array and just start appending to it - and have the data
> actually *stick* and not be mysteriously gone when you try to read it back.)
>
> The API is awful, too. MovieClip, the *foundation* of AS2-based Flash, has
> got to be the most poorly designed sprite class I've ever seen. When I
> switched to Haxe, I ended up going to great lengths to wrap MovieClip in a
> much more sane Sprite class.
>
> I think the only way they could have made ActionScript2 worse is if they
> made it indent-syntax. Ok, and entirely removed what little declaring and
> type-tagging it does have.
>
> And the IDE is wretched. It has one of the most awkward editors I've used,
> and the bloat...christ, the bloat gets twice as bad with each version, the
> UI gets more goofily-skinned with each version, and the bloat in CS5 -
> honest to god - it makes a fully loaded Eclipse seem downright *lean*.
>
>
>> (And no, I would not touch any of this stuff with a 10-foot pole.)
>>
>
> With ActionScript, ignorance truly is bliss. I'd probably be a happier,
> [somewhat] less disgruntled man if I'd never needed to use it.

I hate the fact that Flash games are created the way they are. For
one, it's impenetrable to try and learn properly, I had so much
trouble figuring out how to do things properly, you can attach scripts
to almost any object, but sometimes it might be shared over all of the
same objects, and other times only on that instance, depending on how
you've placed them on the canvas.

I probably wrote some terrible code when I started making Flash games,
and now Actionscript is so foreign to me that i can barely understand
where to start.

--
James Miller