&#62; ... learning Actionscript was like drowning in quicksand. ... noise from complete beginners offering each other tidbits of programming wisdom, such as:<p>&#62;&#62; make a loop (a while loop I think)<p>And he says that's a problem. He's right, of course. However, there <i>might</i> also be something very good going on here.<p>Some history: Back in '78 when I got my first computer, you flipped the power switch, heard a beep, and then you were in a development environment -- a pretty rudimentary one, but a development environment nonetheless. Now fast forward 32 years, and we get the iPad; to program it, you need to pay $100 and sign an NDA (or something like that).<p>And so some of us are asking: How are newbies supposed to get involved in programming today? It sounds like Actionscript might be at least a partial answer.