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Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

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Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#311

Post by xg15 »

zanny wrote: post #204
mntmoss wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the essential thing about this era is a gradual cultural rediscovery of ownership. We've just been through a very lengthy race to the bottom for all sorts of information - pretty much anything ephemeral and disposable is free or extremely cheap, and then heavily locked down to protect property rights. And it's built a kind of event horizon to culture where all the things pressed up closest to the digital univ…

> Where can I send a kid to learn to play with software and not have it all break six months later, rendering the learning useless? If you had a Pentium 1 PC, would you not still be able to run DOS and BASIC on it? Software "breaking" only happens if you let it - you can still use Windows 95, or XP, and run all those old programs that no longer work. If you have a copy of Flash 4 you can still run that on supported h…

> Software "breaking" only happens if you let it

I don't think this is realistically true in the age of cloud services and forced, automatic updates.

Maybe it is if you painstakingly stick to decades-old software or FOSS - but this will mean you're missing out on a lot of progress made in modern software.

(edit:)

> ...and probably still have people with modern Flash installations be able to play it back?

Even if you got Flash running on your old PC, this is where things would break. Browsers deliberately increase the friction and technical expertise needed to enable Flash content, with the openly stated goal to drop Flash support completely in the mid-to-near future.

Learning Flash might still be a fun experience if you can keep it on the PC it's produced - but if you want your kid to pass their movies on to anyone else, Flash is nowadays a dead-end.

I agree though with the Doom thing. My suspicion is that in 20 years, many of today's games will be forgotten but people will likely still play FFIV on emulator - not because some artistic quality were better but simply because you can.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#312

Post by fbn79 »

Flash was a cancer for the web (poor usability, incomprensible web interfaces, low importance to the real content, quasi-zero accessibility), no responsive, closed source insecure and monopolistic platform. I has never been a fan of Jobs and iPhone but I was very happy when the iPhone success signed the start of the decline and extinction of Flash tecnology.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#313

Post by aidenn0 »

mr_toad wrote: post #231
aidenn0 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS Excel also lets you put any kind of code anywhere. IMO, nNot forcing any organization lowers the barrier to entry.

> Not forcing any organization lowers the barrier to entry. And raises the barrier to maintenance.

That part is (hopefully) obvious to the typical HN reader, but the fact that some things that make maintenance harder also make it easier for non-developers is sometimes missed.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#314

Post by buboard »

PBnFlash wrote: post #81
dillonmckay wrote: post #55

Nobody has mentioned Youtube using Flash initially to create the experience of ‘it just works.’ We had RealPlayer, Quicktime, and others, but video on the web was rather difficult.

HLS DASH are never going to be as simple as RTMP was with flash. It "just worked" in a way the internet just doesn't anymore.

it s as if we are regressing

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#315

Post by eXpl0it3r »

chii wrote: post #285
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything young people do now outside of schooling and dedicated hobbies seems to be mobile-based, so Tiktok is probably the equivalent to Newgrounds these days. This "novices" thing seems to me to be overblown though; Alan Kay has been beating the "programming for novices" drum for decades with Smalltalk and basically nothing happened. I would rather have professional-quality tools with decent Youtube tutorials, li…

> Tiktok is probably the equivalent to Newgrounds these days. that's like comparing crack-cocaine den to LARP'ing groups. No way newgrounds is anything comparable to the lows that is tiktok (or vine).

The comparison isn't about the quality, creativeness or usefulness, but about on what kids spend their free time and attention.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#316

Post by buboard »

smt88 wrote: post #201

It is very, very silly to suggest the Flash era was more creative than the YouTube/indie-game era. In general, the Web is more commercialized now, so creative content doesn't always rise to the top, and there are incentives to be a low-quality content factory. But there are thousands or millions of online videos (some, like Flash, are animated) and indie games on major platforms that are just as creative as the most…

youtube and indie games literally started as flash

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#317

Post by mikorym »

taneem wrote: post #251

During 1999-2000, I helped hundreds of people learn how to use Flash. I was, looking back now, probably one of the top experts on Flash 4 at the time in the world. The twist - I was a 15 year old living in a tiny African country called Lesotho. Lesotho is pretty isolated from the world. Nobody even knows it exists. Living there, Silicon Valley might as well be on Mars. However, we used to get issues of Wired Magazine…

Was there a "computing hotspot" where you were at the time? I think with all the school issues (and university issues) in South Africa it would be cool to have sort of (physical) computing libraries with Raspberry Pis or something like that–a sort of enabling environment where independent kids would at least have the resources necessary to build an eventual career for themselves (perhaps unwittingly at first).

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#318

Post by countryqt30 »

taneem wrote: post #251

During 1999-2000, I helped hundreds of people learn how to use Flash. I was, looking back now, probably one of the top experts on Flash 4 at the time in the world. The twist - I was a 15 year old living in a tiny African country called Lesotho. Lesotho is pretty isolated from the world. Nobody even knows it exists. Living there, Silicon Valley might as well be on Mars. However, we used to get issues of Wired Magazine…

That's exactly the spirit! The internet makes it so easy for "poorer" countries to level up damn quickly! Spread the word there! <3

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#319

Post by eXpl0it3r »

l_t wrote: post #16

I had a formative experience with Flash as a middle schooler. I loved Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, etc. I thought the videos were hilarious and the stick-figure-style animation was approachable. So I acquired Flash, and I was blown away by how easy it was to create these silly animations. Automatic tweening was a miracle to me. Since then I've done a lot of video editing with different tools, but I still think back…

> I believe it's that powerful experience for novices that we're missing

I think we have more "powerful experiences" for novices than ever before, which is part of the whole attention problem. In the early 2000, we didn't have YouTube, Netflix, WhatsApp, TikTok, etc. where tons of teens spend many, many, many hours in nowadays. Those who got access to Flash found a sink for their free time and after just a few hours will have figured out the basic elements. Try to get kids to focus for just these initial few hours on their own, without them getting distracted on some other platform or immediately trying to find a YouTube tutorial, instead of just trying things and actually learning the tool, rather than copying whatever someone else is doing in a video.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#320

Post by taneem »

cmarschner wrote: post #294
taneem wrote: post #251

During 1999-2000, I helped hundreds of people learn how to use Flash. I was, looking back now, probably one of the top experts on Flash 4 at the time in the world. The twist - I was a 15 year old living in a tiny African country called Lesotho. Lesotho is pretty isolated from the world. Nobody even knows it exists. Living there, Silicon Valley might as well be on Mars. However, we used to get issues of Wired Magazine…

So what are you doing these days?

I moved to Mars! My family immigrated to North America soon after and I studied and worked in tech ever since.
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