Many newcomers to web development may not be used to how web implementations of JavaScript execute. Namely, in what order it executes. This can be the source of many errors that are difficult to pinpoint if you aren't experienced with it. I think this also affects people who are very experienced with other programming languages and fosters a lot of undeserved hate towards ActionScript and JavaScript. (It's important to note that not all implementations of JavaScript are the same, and that some may in fact defer from what is said below. This article concerns browser and Flash based ECMAScript.)

The thing to understand about JavaScript is that it isn't compiled for the most part. (This is not exactly true for ActionScript because of the introduction of classes in ActionScript 2.0, however, the runtime script remains the same. You might argue that it compiles into a *.swf file, but in reality, that is the combination of everything that has to do with the Flash file. The ActionScript still remains live.) It's good that it isn't compiled though, because this allows for much more dynamic, expressive coding.

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