Ask HN: How Will “Web Assembly” Succeed Where “Adobe Flash” Failed? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How Will “Web Assembly” Succeed Where “Adobe Flash” Failed?

8 pointsgitgud7 comments

From what I've read [1], Flash was initially accepted, but then gradually hated more as [2] problems became obvious.

Could the same be true for the adoption of "Web Assembly"? Besides using the Javascript runtime and sandboxing, they seem like they may have similar problems in the future like; running binaries, compatibility, security updates... just like Flash did... but maybe this time it's different...

[1] https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/the-story-of-flash/

[2] https://www.granneman.com/webdev/graphicsmultimedia/multimedia/flash/whatswrongwithflash

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Steve Jobs hated Flash because it was buggy and Adobe was slow to fix the constant problems. Additionally, it was resource-intensive and slowed down the new Macs.

Once he started to advocate for its replacement with something else then that was the beginning of the end. Flash was mostly a pain since you had to install it up to the time when chrome started to include it as part of the browser.

I initially hated it because web designers decided to use it to produce stupid and time-wasting opening screens to websites.

Web Assembly is a different story. It's native and browser makers will be quick to fix any problems. Plus its main purpose is to speed things up. I think it has a future but only time will tell.

I think browsers are buggy too. Leave a javascript intensive page up for a while and look at your memory. Instead of bitching at adobe now people will bitch at google. I just feel memory management for JavaScript just isn't that great. After a while you have to close the page and restart it.

It just seems everything is cyclical in tech. Microsoft gets monopoly on browser market. People complain about it. Flash gets monopoly on streaming media people complain about it. Now Chrome has a monopoly on the browser market.

Browsers need to get their s##t together, webrtc / video-audio is still a mess to work with and they hog the cpu in a way that flash doesn't (anymore). There is not even a standard stack to replace the adobe flash/media server stack.

1. Web assembly has (better) access to the DOM, making it easier to integrate with other web content.

2. With WASM, browser makers are in control of the engine, so they can’t complain/can only complain internally if said engine is slow, buggy, or insecure.

HTML5 and the success of the mobile form factor (ok fine, the iPhone) killed Flash. If those two technologies didn't succeed or exist, I'm sure we would still be making due with it where it excelled.

The success of mobiles or the iphone themself had no impact on the death of Flash. Apple's blatant hatred for it and decision to publicly vilify it and discriminate against it did.

There were plenty of phones that supported Flash, at least initially. Adobe could have done better to keep it going but I think they saw the writing on the wall early on.

They released Flex at about the time all that happened - so many there was some belief in the future of "Flash"?

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