When comparing Actionscript vs Pyret, the Slant community recommends Pyret for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” Pyret is ranked 50th while Actionscript is ranked 77th. The most important reason people chose Pyret is:
You can use the development environment without installation in your browser and share your programs via the Google Drive integration.
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Pros
Pro Great for light games
Easy 2D and rich 3D capabilities means ActionScript is a great game prototyping or production tool. Relatively easy to get images on a stage and easy to share with it's wide platform support.
Pro Wide compatability
Runs on all major platforms as an AIR executable or mobile app, as well as in-browser as a FLASH file.
Pro Object-oriented
Teaches strong typed habits and follows many conventions of major programming languages.
Pro Large community
Online games and a colorful history means there are a lot of existing scripts and examples on the internet for available integration as well as tutorials.
Pro Online IDE
You can use the development environment without installation in your browser and share your programs via the Google Drive integration.
Pro Designed for education
A primary goal of Pyret is to be an excellent choice for a first programming language. This heavily influences the development of the language. For example: if it's felt that some aspect of the language could be made better for the language's users, The development team won't hesitate about implementing breaking (non backwards compatible) changes into Pyret for the greater good of the language. This makes Pyret an impressively "wart free" programming language.
Cons
Con No future
The last stable release is : 3.0 / June 27, 2006. Adobe confirmed there will be no 4.0, ever. This train has stopped long time ago.
Con Not very widely used
Past its hay-day, ActionScript is reserved for more niche products. This in turn means that choosing ActionScript as a career path is often ill-advised. Exceptions include ScaleForm for UI/UX in games (including AAA games) and light apps and games.
Con Waning support
Un-usable in-browser on most mobile devices, ActionScript is used mainly for niche AIR programs, graphical mobile and in-browser apps and games, and in UI/UX using Scaleform.
Con Missing IDE features
For example: content assist, go to declaration, etc.