Are there any new web languages coming out anytime soon? I was just wondering because I am getting kind of behind with web programming.


Thanks!

Actionscript 3.0 shows a lot of promise. Actionscript is the language of the Flash Player, but Adobe is Open Sourcing the AVM (Actionscript Virtual Machine - basically the Flash Player). And the new Flash and Flex that use Actionscript 3 are looking interesting.

Flash is already almost universal - more so than even Java these days (Thanks Microsoft). So I think it's the future.

Pete

Reverend, what do you mean by "Open Sourcing?"

Is Adobe releasing AVM into the Open Source realm? That's very interesting. Do you suppose they see an advantage in doing so?

By "Open Sourcing", I mean that they are releasing the source code into a public project (probably through SourceForge), and they'll let anyone work on it to develop features, etc.

I think the advantages would be:

• Lots more development of features, without them having to do the work
• Wider acceptance of the Actionscript language (which in turn would sell more of their development tools - Flash, Flex, etc)

But this is the first time I can think of Adobe letting go of anything proprietary. (Except maybe .pdf, now that I think of it...)

Pete

I doubt any new languages will be coming out. Unless they have like some major breakthrough, everything can still be done in the current generation of languages. I don't think we'll see a new one till 2020.

2020 seems to be a bit far off I think. Considering the rate that web technology is expanding and increasing I wouldn't be surprised to see a new language or two as early as 2010.

As for mainstream use I don't think any new languages will be mainstream for at least 5 more years however, mostly because it takes time for people to get motivated to switch or to learn new things.

Personally I think the next big web breakthrough will be when the potential for flash based websites to be fully realised and optimised for search engine indexing.

I think this will come with the next generation of Internet connections when data transfer rates can be increased while remaining affordable.