Halfway, the dev complains about the orignal devs using XML, because it is not efficient "Hey, I'm not complaining, it makes my job easier."
Well sounds like the original developers of Flash made a good decision. If it makes it easier to parse the content at a later stage, I'm willing to call it a win!
Examples:
1. Using text formats embedded in XML -- he took advantage of this when reverse engineering
2. Generating text ASM -- he said this aids debuggability, and allows using existing ASM tools that he didn't have to write
3. Generating C++ -- taking advantage of the type system, as mentioned, and a huge array of other tools (profilers and debuggers)
It's data-centric rather than code-centric. It's a interoperable and transparent architecture, not a monolithic one. (Which is not surprising because Flash itself was made for the web.)
Related: The Internet Was Designed with a Narrow Waist https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2022/02/diagrams.html
A Sketch of the Biggest Idea in Software Architecture https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2022/03/backlog-arch.html