In my experience at least, when I talk about "Flash programming" I'm not just referring to Actionscript, but the whole package, the whole Flash suite including

In my experience at least, when I talk about "Flash programming" I'm not just referring to Actionscript, but the whole package, the whole Flash suite including manipulating the timeline and multimedia objects programmatically. Sounds like you favour Perl over Actionscript. From what I know of both, they are not commonly compared! But as with many things in this business, it all depends on your needs, likes, and the project requirements.