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[nikki]

I started studying JavaScript seriously since a while, atm I am reading JavaScript- the good parts
I recommend that.

before I used to work in a company as a flash developer and when the I-device madness began we had to start using JavaScript. I hated it because it's not a classical OOP language.

I've worked with a few of these trans compilers (monkey, coffeescript)
but in the end you'll be better off if you stop fighting the weirdness and start studying what's good about it.

There is a reason JavaScript is the lingua franca of the internet and Java is not.

[Dacke]

There is a reason JavaScript is the lingua franca of the internet and Java is not.

Yup. Legacy.

[nikki]

Yup. Legacy.

If legacy was the thing Java would have won, it was more mature at the beginning of the web, cleaner and way more powerful
but:
Even at the time (1995) smart people knew the future of the web wasn't in closed source applets.   

those were slow to start, dangerous, could not respond to events in the browser easily and needed a full fledged IDE plus compiler to make. (opposed to just opening the html file and writing some).
and don't forget the closedsource (corporate) plugin you'll need to run them. 

LiveScript/JavaScript was a way better match but was just a little crappy kiddie scripting language. 

the rest is history.

not to say Java doesn't have it's place, it's just NOT in the client side of the web.

anyway all these points are way more relevant to the general web  and not perse to gamedevelopment.
People who play games will more easily install plugins for that reason.

[petertos]

I see HTML5 (the compound of all surrounding web technologies) as starting to get mature. My last Flash game was summer 2012, now we are in 2013 and there are plenty of HTML5 examples, many of them on the Feedback section of these forums.

I have got to the conclusion that to me, it is the time to change to HTML5, although I don't know a word of Javascript. It's a programming language, it must not be that difficult.

My next games are gonna be webbaps.

[Dacke]

@nikki: I'm not arguing that Java would have been a better choice (it would indeed have been a catastrophe for the open web).

But the people who chose to put in JavaScript didn't know how the web would evolve, they didn't have a great master-plan. They only knew that they needed some light-weight scripting and (very reasonably) chose to put in a flexible, light-weight language. JavaScript became the standard over time and we are stuck with it due to legacy reasons.

But JavaScript is hardly an optimal fit for the modern web. JS has serious issues with performance, debugging, security and is generally a messy language. Which is fine if you're only going to do some minor scripting, but can get problematic for bigger projects like games.

Which is why the transcompilation movement with support of assembly-like JS (spearheaded by Mozilla, who invented JS) is great news for game-makers. It provides much better performance and allows the use of different languages, so that developers can use a language they feel comfortable with and get proper IDE support and compile-time errors.

My main point being: You don't have to use JavaScript just because you are developing for the web.

[nikki]

aah like that, yes we agree.
JS could be way better.

I like coffeescript the best as a trans thingie, however some guru's do claim it to be only of use to hobby and experimental code as it's still rough 'they' say.

[Dacke]

Oh, and btw: sorry for the rude one-liner in my first response

[nikki]

  for that greatness
edit: and