Thoughts on Flash (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on Flash (2010)

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Prior to this post Steve had actually discussed Flash and app store via a couple of emails. That's also available via archive.org here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20121006075101/http://www.taoeff...

>We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

What Steve said is true. But I wonder what if, the platform shift to the Web.

I was a Flash developer during most of the 2000s until exactly this memo. I was incredibly productive and felt like my art and engineering sides were used constantly. So many client projects but also personal projects and games during that time. Then it was just taken away in what felt overnight. It took me years to get up to speed with html5/css3/js, which wasn't ready for primetime when this memo came out. I'm probably a better developer in many ways in the long run but I still, in 2022, can't bang out fun flash cartoons or simple little games with the speed of 20 years ago. Sure we're not locked into a browser plugin and accessibility is much better, but it still feels like a several steps back.

> I'm probably a better developer in many ways in the long run but I still, in 2022, can't bang out fun flash cartoons or simple little games with the speed of 20 years ago.

This reminds me of how I felt about the AS2 to AS3 transition. It forced me to do things "better" but it came at the cost of being to make little dumb things as quickly.

Kind of sad that they removed the page from the website, honestly.

This was the death knell for Flash, but Flash was going to be replaced with HTML eventually. What was surprising was how long it took for the frontend stack of HTML/JS/CSS to match Flash, from a proper IDE and dev environment, to performance, to actual runtime capabilities.

HTML/JS/CSS doesn't still match what Flash was, in terms of artist/designer friendliness.

The rendering technology was replaced, but the Flash development environment never was. This is why there aren't thriving html5 game portals filled with innovative game mechanics from the next generation of junior technical developers. The bar is too high to get started now.

The death of Flash involves a misplaced belief by people unfamiliar with both technologies that HTML5 would supercede Flash in the near term. It's ten years later and it hasn't happened yet.

This misplaced belief was seized upon by a ruthless business leader who stood to benefit from restricting what the web could do (but could not do on his phones). Apple continues this trend today with progressive web apps.

I am still waiting for HTML to catch up to Flash. The IDEs suck, but really the capabilities are still not there.

Flash threatened their business model

Biggest mistake of Adobe was to not opensource Flash and ActionScript.. it would have lived a much nicer and healthier life on linux/windows/android/web

It's a very successful and sad story, it allowed many gamedev to reach the world by targeting the web, no install needed

A little bit what WASM allows today, but unfortunately, WASM is useless as is since you need to write JS bridge for graphics/networking/audio/filesystem

Unity took over, as a bloated solution, with a non-friendly business model

Job's ridiculing "closed and proprietary" products is the height of hypocrisy.

Really wish Adobe will some day open source both Flash the player and the editing Tools.

They may not be able to due to patent restrictions.

Patents have nothing to do with this (after all, you are only allowed to claim an invention via a patent by making it public through that patent), but it could very well be that they have contractual obligations with third parties. For the same reason Windows couldn't be open-sourced even if Microsoft wanted to.

I believe you meant to say copyright/licensing restrictions, right?

Honestly loved it when I read it at the time, I can't think of many times a feature not being included I've cheered at.

I saw it as the beginning of the level of arrogance we see from Apple today.

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