Adobe Flex - ActionScript Flexes its Muscles

Recently I've developed a keen interest in software-as-a-service and what as been coined Cloud Computing. The idea is to use current web technologies and RESTful principles to provide software services to a larger audience. This has led me to take a more detailed look at Flex and its associated technologies. You can only get the best out of Flex by using ActionScript in conjunction. ActionScript is a dialect of JavaScript or to give it its proper name ECMAScript. JavaScript is a late-bound, dynamic, prototype based OO language. Its worth stating this because although most people are familiar with JavaScript, very few know its OO origins.

JavaScript is heavily influenced by Self and Scheme, a point brought home by its original name "LiveScript". The name JavaScript was dreamt up later by Sun and Netscape during the Browser Wars. Given its roots, I have always thought that JavaScript is under utilised and unfairly maligned. Beyond DOM hacking on the browser very few people know anything about JavaScripts OO credentials which are pretty impressive. Most peoples experiences are coloured by cross Browser incompatibilities and poor performance. Recently Dan Ingalls, of Smalltalk-80 fame, has taken JavaScript and shown what it can really do. This work has resulted in the Lively Kernal. Its worth taking a look at what Dan and his team have achieved. It is pretty impressive.

Over the years ActionScript as migrated away from JavaScript in an attempt to become "Java Programmer" friendly. Well its succeeded. ActionScript code looks very similar to Java. You can use type annotations and classes just like in Java. It also supports packages and limits you to one class per file, so it is really home from home for the average Java programmer. The idea is to provide an easy on ramp for developers moving to ActionScript from C++, Java and C# .

Having played with Self and seen what it can do, I was curious to know how much of Selfs dynamism had made its way into JavaScript and ActionScript. Well firstly, JavaScript retains slots just like Self. So JavaScript has representation independence. Unlike Self, a JavaScript Object only has a single parent slot, so no multiple inheritance. Oddly enough the parent slot is called the 'prototype' which I find rather confusing. In Self the parent slot is called the 'trait'.

Objects are created in JavaScript using constructor functions. Functions in JavaScript are first class objects, again something borrowed from Smalltalk/Self or is it Scheme? I'm not sure, but functions are objects also. If you must use a C-like syntax, then JavaScript is a pretty impressive son of Self in my opinion, inheriting most of the fundamental qualities of its father.

OK. How well does ActionScript stack up? ActionScript is a difficult language to get into. Macromedia/Adobe assume that all you want to do with ActionScript is web presentation. This means that there doesn't seem to a standalone interpreter you can use to play with ActionScript just on its own. Well I've succumbed and installed Flex Builder, the Flex IDE, and have been rather impressed with it. The "main" for ActionScript applications is the "onCreationComplete()" method hook inside a Flex web page. Without going into the details, you need to write a Flex app to use ActionScript. If anyone out there knows how to run ActionScript standalone then I would be very grateful to find out.

Fortunately FlexUnit does all this for you and you can get playing with ActionScript very quickly by writing tests. OK, back to the ActionScript language. I started writing JavaScript and compiled it using the ActionScript compiler in Flex Builder and it works. So ActionScript does everything JavaScript does.

What they have done is extended JavaScript without fundamentally changing the internals. I concluded in my blog post on classes versus prototypes, that prototypes where the more fundamnetal abstraction. Well, ActionScript proves this. They have added class declaration syntax mostly as syntactic sugar for the creation of prototypes. They have taken this further in ActionScript3.0 (AS3), changing the method lookup mechanism, by copying down method objects from the class hierarchy into a single 'trait' object at compile time. This speeds up method dispatch. I don't understand all the details, but the only restriction introduced is that an objects class is immutable. Classes themselves are still open, just as in Smalltalk or Ruby, so AS3 is as dynamic as these two class based languages (with the exception of 'become:' in Smalltalk). It could be argued that AS3 is not as dynamic as JavaScript. The thing to remember though is that class immutability only applies if you use the 'class' declaration. If you stick to prototypes then ActionScript is as dynamic as JavaScript and Self.

I am pretty impressed with ActionScript. Adobe/Macromedia have managed to extend a prototype based language, making it conceptually similar to C++, Java and C#, whilst retaining the power of prototypes under the covers. It is some achievement.

Even the type annotations in ActionScript are optional, just as advocated by Gilad Bracha. With or without type annotations Flex Builder does a very good job at auto-completion, using type inference no doubt. When you leave out the type annotations Flex builder provides warnings, but these can be ignored or even suppressed. So you can save key strokes if you wish whilst prototyping.

The main problem JavaScript has faced in the past is slow interpreters and incompatibilities across browsers. With ActionScript 3.0 Adobe has solved both of these problems. The Flash VM is ubiquitous with 98% market penetration. The copy-down method lookup mechanism in AS3 provides vtable like performance, whilst still retaining dynamic dispatch when needed. The history of the evolution of OO support in ActionScript and an explanation of the method dispatch mechanism in AS3 is provided here.

Flex/As3 is definitely a web technology to look out for. Its nice to see the work of the original Self and Smalltalk researchers still living on, and playing its rightful place in the future of the web. Good ideas don't die, they just mutate :)