Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

newgrounds.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 126 posts

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#71

Post by chrisan »

rickdicker wrote: post #30
thewebcount wrote: post #27

The visuals were a lot of fun, but I don’t understand why I, as a viewer/consumer/whatever of this sort of thing, would ever want these things: > Unknown runtime I like to know whether I’m going to have time to view all of something or not. I might want to set aside some time to watch something if it’s too long for the break I’m taking right now. > No rewinding, no skipping ahead Ugh. Just … no. If I saw something co…

I wouldn't say any of those bullet points are inherently better - just differences for you to contemplate. For all the downsides of these things, there are artistic uses of each that sadly are not an option on modern video platforms. Example - mystery runtime, while inconvenient to someone in a hurry, is useful in keeping suspense or surprise. It's kind of hard to convince a reader that the hero is at risk of dying w…

Would you consider putting this on youtube or something? I grew up with flash (my first paid job was an as3 project for a medical teaching team) and was always interested in the artistic side of flash

I got to the point where you are talking with the older guy but wanted to get back to work and reference something. I noticed whenever I tabbed to something else the video/audio would stop, so I dragged the tab out of firefox create its own window and it continued playing for about 30 seconds then for some reason it stopped and when I looked it was back at the prompt from the start

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#72

Post by dandare »

Side note: The Flash vector editor was the most efficient vector editor I had the experience working with. I wish Illustrator had the same capability.

Apparently I am not the only one who misses it: https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/1769/is-th...

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#74

Post by dandare »

My professional career was:

ActionScript 1 -> I am making silly games!

ActionScript 2 -> I am making cool games!

ActionScript 3 -> OO, classes, IDEs, SDKs, oh my got, I think I can write code now!

JS -> What is this crap??

TypeScript -> Thanks Flash, I am a software developer thanks to AS3.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#75

Post by hutzlibu »

woogley wrote: post #69
mclightning wrote: post #53

I was a huge Flash nerd, all the way since Macromedia Flash 5. I learnt programming with Flash 5 and action script. I have been at it until Flash 8. Then I stopped putting effort to keep-up and eventually Flash died. Something was lost in the internet culture. Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore. If anyone knows, please do tell me. WebGL? Any WebGL-powered framewo…

There is nothing like Flash IMO. Closest we have in the modern day is Unity and Godot

Closer would be Adobe Animate, the official successor, but it is really not the same experience.

Wick editor is nice, but developement is on hold. It is open source, so maybe something will still come out if it.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#76

Post by hutzlibu »

dandare wrote: post #74

My professional career was: ActionScript 1 -> I am making silly games! ActionScript 2 -> I am making cool games! ActionScript 3 -> OO, classes, IDEs, SDKs, oh my got, I think I can write code now! JS -> What is this crap?? TypeScript -> Thanks Flash, I am a software developer thanks to AS3.

Yeah, I can relate, only that I had to stay with js longer than planned.

And my old workflow with Flash, Flash Builder, Flex builder I am still missing.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#77

Post by rickdicker »

chrisan wrote: post #71
rickdicker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say any of those bullet points are inherently better - just differences for you to contemplate. For all the downsides of these things, there are artistic uses of each that sadly are not an option on modern video platforms. Example - mystery runtime, while inconvenient to someone in a hurry, is useful in keeping suspense or surprise. It's kind of hard to convince a reader that the hero is at risk of dying w…

Would you consider putting this on youtube or something? I grew up with flash (my first paid job was an as3 project for a medical teaching team) and was always interested in the artistic side of flash I got to the point where you are talking with the older guy but wanted to get back to work and reference something. I noticed whenever I tabbed to something else the video/audio would stop, so I dragged the tab out of f…

That was the end!

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#78

Post by chaoz_ »

grishka wrote: post #58

Flash literally changed my life. I wouldn't be who I am without it. I owe everything to it. Without Flash, I wouldn't have most of my friends who I met via the VKontakte app developer community. My career would have been vastly different because I was later hired to that same VKontakte thanks to my previous participation in Flash app developer contests. I got quite a bit of my programming skills from ActionScript as…

Damn I saw too many fun VK apps, which ones have you authored? :D

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#79

Post by LeifCarrotson »

grishka wrote: post #56
mclightning wrote: post #53

I was a huge Flash nerd, all the way since Macromedia Flash 5. I learnt programming with Flash 5 and action script. I have been at it until Flash 8. Then I stopped putting effort to keep-up and eventually Flash died. Something was lost in the internet culture. Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore. If anyone knows, please do tell me. WebGL? Any WebGL-powered framewo…

Nothing. The ease with which Flash allowed one to create all these web experiences, with little to no programming, is still unmatched to this day.

I feel like the same is true of Visual Basic 6. (Excuse me, I'll wait....)

OK, now that we've all calmed back down, VB6 has been unmatched in the way that it allowed someone with zero experience to drag-and-drop and write in what looks like pseudocode to get some little business widget built. Yes, you can engineer something with better architecture that's less likely to paint you into a `DoEvents()` corner. Yes, the mere existence of settings like `On Error Resume Next`, `Option Strict Off`, and `Option Explicit Off` are anathema to correctness, security (lol), and robustness. No, if you expect support for Unicode or 64-bit operations, it wasn't built for that.

Many people loathe Flash for its security vulnerabilities, or VB6 because of experiences with poorly-written code at businesses that should have had a 'real programmer.' And today, a tool that made the same design decisions that Flash and VB6 did - pandering to novices who weren't willing to go to the effort to do things right - would be derided as a toy, as unusable for real work outside of sandboxed demos. But both were instrumental as stepping stones in the early 2000s to transform non-computer-literate individuals and businesses into creators and users.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#80

Post by BoppreH »

mclightning wrote: post #53

I was a huge Flash nerd, all the way since Macromedia Flash 5. I learnt programming with Flash 5 and action script. I have been at it until Flash 8. Then I stopped putting effort to keep-up and eventually Flash died. Something was lost in the internet culture. Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore. If anyone knows, please do tell me. WebGL? Any WebGL-powered framewo…

My feeling is that we won't see another Flash because the artists went to video platforms[1], and the developers are trying to make money on the app stores[2].

Flash was the most attention grabbing medium at the time (because of bandwidth constraints), and making money was not the expectation, so the two groups flocked together and created all those wonderful animations and games for free. I don't see Flash, or anything like it, winning against TikTok and app store cash grabs anytime soon.

[1] Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN92RC0Lmd4 . Distinct visual style? Check. Absurdist? Check. High effort? Check. Niche? Currently 3k views, check. Available for free? Check. 15 years ago this would be on Newgrounds.

[2] Exhibit B: https://play.google.com/store/games . Hundreds of thousands of simple games. 15 years ago, the less greedy version of this would be on Kongregate.

Post reply on HN