Serious programmers started becoming more interested in ActionScript as a
development tool, but they found that even though ActionScript 2.0 rivaled
the features of other languages, it did not rival their performance. This was
because each version of ActionScript was built on the foundation of the previous
one, going all the way back to its very simple beginnings. Flash Player was
not originally designed for creating high-performance applications and games, but
developers began using it for those purposes. It became clear that a new version of
ActionScript needed to be written from the ground up.