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I am currently using VB.net 2010 and WPF 4 to create an application, but the further I learn it, the more I realize that the two programming languages may not meet my needs, especially where I have to migrate a version to a web-based Silverlight platform.

With this in mind, I'm thinking of dumping the Microsoft programming languages all together before I get further into this project, and build this entire thing over again in a cross-platform language.

This brings me to my question: I need the graphic capabilities of WPF, which I know is in the Flash platform, but I also need a language I can migrate my VERY complex VB.net core code into; thus, I'm thinking using Python.

Are these two languages capable of working side by side? Alternatively, can I convert all my Vb.net code into ActionScript, instead of using two languages?
Is there another alternative to consider? Open source is the best, though I know ActionScript isn't, by any means open source. This is a strictly commercial project.

Thank you!

avpaderno
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CodeMouse92
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2 Answers2

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You can pretty much make any technology communicate with any other technology given a decoupled system architecture.

You could definitely convert any vb.net code to Python. It may not match 1:1, but it's definitely possible.

You won't be able to translate all of your VB code directly to Actionscript as you'd have to open database access directly to clients, which would be a horrendous security hole, especially seeing how easy .swf files are to decompile in a readable format.

If you want cross-platform, free technology, I'd suggest Python back-end with an HTML5/canvas front end.

I find Flash easier to author things in given Adobe's IDE, but I definitely lean towards HTML5 for personal projects due to the facts that 1) it's native to the browser (whereas Flash requires a plugin) and 2) I find HTML5 stuff to be more powerful at this point (especially when you factor in the webgl stuff, which of course, isn't fully cross browser compatible yet). But this is a religious debate and you'll find vastly varying opinions on the front end tech stack.

Demian Brecht
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Python flash... Hmm i found this: http://pyswftools.sourceforge.net/howto.html
and http://www.libming.org

What i love about python is that it is very flexible: http://wiki.python.org/moin/IntegratingPythonWithOtherLanguages

Also you can make your own bridge to your platform (for example giving .xml to flash and doing all the processing in python or other way around).

I wouldn't recommend compiling your code to other code since it may be slower to run/deploy/create.

As Demian Brecht suggested - look at HTML5, sure old browsers do not support it, but it's up to us to convince other people to upgrade and forcing some old lady to upgrade or download firefox/chrome instead of using IE8 will bring joy to us - developers! ;)

I hope it will help somehow... Good luck.

JackLeo
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