Take some time and think about this tweet for a moment. It took me a while to realize that Joel Hooks is right. I was embaressed of myself. How could I forget about that? But I had also a big smile on my face at the same same time. Let me explain why.
The Java to SWF compiler does not compile Java sourcecode but JVM bytecode to ActionScript bytecode. This means I do not have to teach my program the Java language. It only understands JVM bytecode. This seems like an akward decision on the one hand since working on the bytecode level implies lots of problems. But it turns out that this was a really cool decision on the other hand. “Java to SWF compiler” is maybe the wrong description. “any language that compiles to JVM bytecode to SWF compiler” is maybe better.
So what does any language mean? Here is a list of JVM languages. Now you feel maybe like I did after reading that tweet. And I am really looking forward to get Scala up and running.
Some problems still exist. Threading is one issue and I will basically have to do what Scott Peterson did for Alchemy. But reflections, annotations and method overloading have to be solved as well. Some glitches may exist even after figuring everything out. Stacktraces will look pretty weird. However I think this is a really cool project.
Update: I forgot to mention something important. Java supports native code. This means you can build a library that works with OpenGL for instance. Those native methods can not be converted. There are also some other things that do not work. File access is just one of them.
