[siasia]

Now I know the reason why I felt uncomfortable about ActionScript. Flash folks were always convincing me that AS3 is perfectly fine and kickass language. Next time I'll just link this.

[chc]

Given that you didn't have this information before, it's highly unlikely that this was why you felt uncomfortable. Most likely you just don't like ActionScript. It's OK — you're allowed to have personal taste.

[rpeden]

To be fair, there's nothing wrong with the language. The article points out problems in the VM and the compiler.

There's nothing stopping someone from writing, for example, an AS3 compiler for the JVM that interacts with Java libraries in the same way JRuby does.

[buster]

Well, since he is talking about how bad the specs are (and not the VM) this seems only partly true ;)

[zem]

check out haxe. it is a good, modern language that compiles to a number of targets, including flash.