Construct supports Javascript coding in addition to its block-based approach. Javascript is an industry-standard language used widely across browsers, servers a...
Is there any plans to narrow the gap between the speed of event blocks and JavaScript?
The reason gml exists is likely the same reason event blocks exists. It’s a simple way to code a game without all the complexity of programming languages like c/c++/c#/java/javascript/etc. there are pros and cons to using an existing language or a custom one.
No language isn’t without its quirks. JavaScript has many. Even the event blocks have some quirks with picking. Although I will say events are what keeps me using construct. The editor is nice too but really, there are many many other options if I want to code in JavaScript.
We've done a ton of work to optimise event blocks already - I've written some past blogs covering work done on that (e.g. compiling expressions to JS). We've done so much that it's probably quite difficult to make any significant further improvements.
The blog post covers several major disadvantages of using a custom programming language. The benefits of JavaScript are so big I think it's clear it outweighs any benefits there may be of a custom language.