Python or ActionScript 3.0

Sun Sep 6 11:42:59 EDT 2009

On Sep 6, 3:19 pm, lkcl <luke.leigh... at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 16, 1:29 am, Douglas Alan <darkwate... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think the future of client-side browser programming is actuallyJavaScript, not ActionScript, though that future may morph into one
> > that mostly usesJavaScriptas a virtual machine. This is the approach
> > that Google Web Toolkit takes. It lets you write your client-side code
> > in Java, and that is then compiled intoJavaScript.
>> as does pyjamas.http://pyjs.org
> this also compiles intojavascript.
> the source language: python.

 oh - i forgot: there's skulpt as well.
 http://code.google.com/p/skulpt.
 skulpt aims to be a python interpreter (written in javascript) first,
with an aim to be a browser-based UI toolkit second.
 pyjamas is the other way round (because it's more useful that way).
 skulpt's current python compatibility, as a less mature project, is
not as good as pyjamas' "--strict" mode, where we have metaclasses and
a near-full implementation of type() etc.
 it's fair to say that the more "python-correct" you get, the more
dreadful the performance of the resultant javascript. strict
typechecked prototypes (in python) a la lisp and a la compiled
languages would open the floodgates to keep the same performance as
the pyjamas -O option.
but - basically, both projects demonstrate that the features of each
language are at least interchangeable. this comes as somethin of a
surprise to many people. java on the other hand is dreadful. the
typechecking _seriously_ impedes progress, as the pypy developers
found out and can tell you more about.
l.