In a post entitled AS3 — the Tomb of AS2/AS1? at the Chinese website 80s Team Blog, the author writes, “When I first set eyes on ActionScript 2.0 to ActionScript 3.0 Migration I broke out in a cold sweat,” citing the many changes in AS3 such as the packaging of nearly all formerly global functions and the removal of others. “It’s hard to imagine how painful it will be to convert programs to AS3.”

“But after the wind and rain has passed there will surely be a rainbow. The short-term suffering cannot extinguish people’s passion for AS3 and Flash. It will be better for the future of Flash. I believe these sacrifices are worth it.

“I believe the more standard AS3 will attract more traditional developers and make development more simple and convenient.”

I guess I feel the same way. I’m putting on my poncho right now.

I’ve been working on a port of Mikael Baros’ Particle Systems and immediate mode rendering Java tutorial to Andre Michelle’s mode7 3D engine. Click to see the Flash 8 movie.

The Flash 8 player is still somewhat slow for this kind of thing; I’m only using sprites in this demo and it kind of taxes my machine. So I’m really looking forward to Monday: "not only will your code run faster (between 5-10x) but it will use less memory." (Mark Anders)