Question

I stumbled accroos the AS3 to JS compiler Jangaroo, which looks like it could be a useful tool since it supports a lot of things I like about AS3.

• Are there any other such compilers?
• Is there another language I could
  learn, that compiles to JS, that is
  AS3 like?

Answer 1

Haxe

From the intro page:

Haxe (pronounced as hex) is an open
source programming language.

While most other languages are bound
to their own platform (Java to the
JVM, C# to .Net, ActionScript to the
Flash Player), Haxe is a multiplatform
language.

It means that you can use Haxe to
target the following platforms :

Javascript : You can compile a Haxe
program to a single .js file. You can
access the typed browser DOM APIs with
autocompletion support, and all the
dependencies are resolved at
compilation time.

Flash : You can compile a Haxe program
to a .swf file. Haxe can compile for
Flash Players 6 to 10, with either
“old” Flash<8 API or newest
AS3/Flash9+ API. Haxe offers very good
performance and language features to
develop Flash content.

NekoVM : You can compile a Haxe
program to NekoVM bytecode. This can
be used for server-side programming
such as dynamic webpages (using
mod_neko for Apache) and also for
commandline or desktop applications,
since the NekoVM can be embedded and
extended with some other DLL.

PHP : You can compile a Haxe program
to .php files. This enable you to use
a high level strictly-typed language
such as Haxe while keeping full
compatibility with your existing
server platform and libraries.

C++ : You can now generate C++ code
from your Haxe source code, with the
required Makefiles. This is very
useful for creating native
applications, for instance in iPhone
development.

Also of possible interest to you: Haxer, a java project i wrote that helps convert AS3 code to Haxe code. It is not complete, but it gives you a good start in converting your code.