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Having worked in a few languages I can say without a doubt that MXML is one of the most fun languages I've used in a long time. How many times I've wished that

Having worked in a few languages I can say without a doubt that MXML is one of the most fun languages I've used in a long time. How many times I've wished that HTML5 too had <HBOX> and <VBOX> implementations. They make your life so much easier (than floating DIVs, etc). The data binding of MXML and Actionscript are also one of the niftiest feature I've come in web development. It is like knockout.js only easier and implemented several years ago. Even their web services like Adobe LiveCycle have been a breeze to use and were able to accomplish real-time collaboration in multiple Flash project with maybe 100 lines of total code. That's powerful. Flash, esp. after MXML is an amazing platform for development but it is dismissed a lot by people who have never used it or maybe got biased using a poorly created end-product. P.S. It's similar to how I used to think that Java was the worst programming language owning to regular "null pointer exceptions" and "slow loading" applets which I now clearly understand are not the fault of the language but the people who used it (esp after seeing awesome projects like Eclipse). Same goes for Flash. There are some super amazing stuff done in Flash, which is ultra fast, ultra robust and beats the pants down of any HTML5 application.

stevenwei 14y ago
Funny, I walked away from Flash/Flex with the exact opposite impression. Data binding is good in theory but horribly slow in practice - any time something changes it dispatches a gazillion change events to be processed, and debugging problems with bindings can involve going really deep down the rabbit hole... It's one of those things that seems nifty from a developer convenience point-of-view but results in poor user experience - pretty much every Flex app I've seen that made heavy use of bindings ran horribly slowly.
lloeki 14y ago
You mean, like the CSS flexible box layout model? [0] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-flexbox/ http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-flexbox/ [1] http://caniuse.com/flexbox http://caniuse.com/flexbox [2] http://flexiejs.com/ http://flexiejs.com/ (try the "Play with it" link)

stevenwei 14y ago

Funny, I walked away from Flash/Flex with the exact opposite impression. Data binding is good in theory but horribly slow in practice - any time something changes it dispatches a gazillion change events to be processed, and debugging problems with bindings can involve going really deep down the rabbit hole... It's one of those things that seems nifty from a developer convenience point-of-view but results in poor user experience - pretty much every Flex app I've seen that made heavy use of bindings ran horribly slowly.

lloeki 14y ago

You mean, like the CSS flexible box layout model? [0] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-flexbox/ http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-flexbox/ [1] http://caniuse.com/flexbox http://caniuse.com/flexbox [2] http://flexiejs.com/ http://flexiejs.com/ (try the "Play with it" link)