AdvancED ActionScript 3.0: Design Patterns

Strong Typing

Data typing is nothing new to the ActionScript language, but the performance gained by supplying data types is. Strong typing facilitates proper use of objects in a system by associating, or binding, the reference to an object's intended interface. Associating a variable with a data type optimizes the bytecode and improves player performance significantly.

Although performance should be reason enough to use typing data, it also provides many benefits in terms of productivity by reducing errors.

Because ActionScript is a dynamically typed language, it provides runtime type checking. Although this makes the language incredibly versatile, it leads to slower debugging, because errors are revealed only when your code is running. Fortunately, ...