An example would be the inability to include plain functions in code other than the main timeline. I tried hard to understand why would anyone think you wouln’t reuse loose functions - after all, say that you wrote a dozen functions to add to the missing functionality of the string class (which is, in every imaginable aspect, inferior to the STD implementation), you wrote them to *use* them, right? Apparently you can’t, as everything you reuse must be an object.

Or another example - the “freedom” of AS leads to nasty, sloppy coding, and such hacks like the Delegate class.

AS is perfect for code no longer than one page - after that, it just starts to get messy, incredibly slow or for some random reason broken.

Developing in Flash pro 8 as a code IDE is only recommendeed by “Designers who do if statements” ;). Someone please form a band with that name. It has an 80’s panache to it. Lots of hairspray would be a necessity. I have got designers that far. Now the elseif’s are the hard part.

If you look around for criticisms you’ll find references to even macromedia won’t code in it.

Yes you can do something intellectually fantastic with flash pro but you have to deal with things in this modern age you should not have to deal with like no detection of syntax errors before compilation and the infamous “You called something that doesn’t exist yet but It may do later so I won’t scare you with any notification errors”. It’s the whole nurture the stupid and hinder the gifted thing which has beeen in it since birth. Designers love it, developers who don’t know better can live with it. Unless you use better tools for coding in other languages you really don’t know any better. Saccharine probably tastes like sugar before you have sugar.

Also there is only so much typing someone can do before they get RSI/arthritis. There is an internal keystoke counter. Do people really want to be saying at 50 “I bet I could still type if only Macromedia had ever deemed intellisense important enough fo us code monkeys in flash pro instead of making the bouncy ball effect easy and clicky clicky?”

Flex 2 seems pretty nice, it seems to be finally getting to the party half a decade later but in a pretty nice gown. But until there is a widespread adoption of flash 9 it is pretty NullPointerException in itself. At least Adobe plan to assault it on everyone in Acroread and stuff so hopefully I don’t have to wait over a year to start implementing Actionscript 3 via client approval.

* No support for bubbling mouse events without writing your own handlers (this is inexcusable).
* Horrible Z-layer handling routines.
* Too many reserved keywords (seems like half the dictionary is reserved).
* Giant, buggy components.
* Poor compiler errors (you got part of this one) and buggy/non-existent debugging mechanisms.
* Lack of support:
- Adobe censors useful questions/comments in online help.
- For some reason Adobe support forums aren’t indexed by Google.
- I don’t even know if there IS an option to buy ActionScript phone support.
- Upgrade policies are weird: owning Flash 8 Pro or Studio doesn’t qualify you for an upgrade to Flex 2.