AS3 is not Flex (right?)

Juten Tach,
this is a First. I am writing a blog post in english. Don’t ask me why, i just wanted to. For the english speaking people, who are wondering, what “Juten Tach” means, it’s german, specifically, it is berlin slang for “good day”.

So, far, so good. Now to what i actually wanted to talk about. At my job, i am in the unfortunate situation of having to do way more AS2 projects than i would like to do and hadn’t have a chance to dive into AS3 as much as i wanted to. But in the last couple of weeks, i had some time and so i am making myself comfortable with the “not-so-new-anymore” language. And of course i like AS3 a lot. I don’t want to discuss everything here, of course i also miss private constructors, of course i love strong typing and runtime exceptions, blah, blah.

But there is something, that is confusing me at a very basic level. That is the mix of AS3 and Flex. When i dive into a new language (well, not completely new in terms of AS2->AS3, but you know what i mean), then i first start off by throwing everything away that is not part of the core language, because i want to know, how things work on a very low level. And what’s on the lowest possible level? The compiler. And there i already get confused. We have a “compc” and we have a “mxmlc”. So, i am not an idiot, i know, that you can compile Actionscript with the mxmlc, but why don’t we have an “as3c”? I believe, actionscript and mxml are two things, that should be clearly separated, because mxml is not part of the core language. it something on top of actionscript. So i would expect having an “as3c” and then having a mxmlc, that is using as3c internally.

I am missing a compiler, that knows nothing about the flex framework and nothing about mxml. A compiler, that gives me only the very basic functionality of compiling classes, embedding assets and creating frames on the main timeline. You can’t do this with mxmlc without having a handfull of Flex interfaces and classes in your resulting swf. Don’t get me wrong, in practice, it is not really a problem, those interfaces and classes are not very big, but i find it confusing, that i need something from the flex framework, only for embedding a graphic. I feel, that’s not the right way. If i want to do a pure AS3 project, then i do not expect anything of the flex framework being included in my project.

To be very true, i also actually don’t understand, why MXML is bound to the flex framework, because again, i feel, these two things do not have to be bound together. And i know, there was some alpha or beta for Flex2, where i could write my own MXML without using the flex framework, only with my own classes. That was so cool, but Macromedia (at that time) abandoned the feature later on.

I understand, that Macromedia and now Adobe is focussing quite strongly on the Flex framework and i also think, it makes sense, but i feel, there should be a little bit more consistency about what belongs to what and i believe, the flex framework and mxml do not (or should not) belong to the core of the flash plattform and thus, there should be a compiler reflecting that.

Feel free to comment on that.