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TinyBasic (Flex/ActionScript)

Overview

Here is the Flex version of my TinyBasic port. See the main page for full details.

My Impressions

I did this without Flex Builder because I wanted to see how usable their SDK was. Microsoft has free Visual Studio versions and both Eclipse and Netbeans are fantastic, free Java IDEs, so I'm scratching my head as to why Adobe doesn't have at least free entry-level, non-trial editions of something that would allow them to capture developer mindshare. If any folks at Adobe have feedback or corrections concerning this, feel free to contact me via my Contact page.

All in all, I found Flex and Actionscript to be very capable. Porting this from C to Actionscript was an order of magnitude harder than the Java and C# ports because:

  • Actionscript syntax deviates from C syntax more than Java and C# does.
  • Actionscript doesn't offer typed arrays or char or short datatypes.
  • The events and mechanism for updating text area content were quirkier than in Swing and C# WinForms.

Despite the above issues, the platform was definitely able to cope this port. The ubiquity of the Flash runtime is tantalizing for developers like me. I also like the ability to run non-trivial program in a sandbox.

TinyBasic/AS

You need Adobe Flash Player 9.0 or greater to run this.

See the Sample Programs page for sample programs you can copy and paste into the window below.

Press [Esc], then [Enter] to break out of a running program.

This is the real, running program, not a screenshot!

Return to the main page (for an overview, the Java and C# ports and sources).