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I still use Flash

foon.uk

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Re: I still use Flash

#381

Post by hbn »

legohead wrote: post #165
alxlaz wrote: post #63

> The vintage Flash UI is great. Buttons have edges. Icons look like things. Space is well-used. It's amazing! Using old UIs makes me feel like an archaeologist discovering some sort of forgotten Roman technology. The lost art of UI design. It's neat. This was one my favourites parts in the article. An the real piece of the pie comes right after it: there's a screenshot with like thirty icons and they're different en…

I am still clicking on Gmail on accident because I think it's Maps. The icons are horrible.

For years I've had a "Google" folder on my phone which links to all the obligatory things - Drive, Maps, Calendar, Meet, etc.

Ever since they made this move to every icon being a minimal shape with the 4 Google colors, I haven't been able to quickly differentiate between app icons. I have to read the labels half the time now cause they're so non-indicative of the app's purpose.

Re: I still use Flash

#382

Post by throwaway2037 »

rogual wrote: post #2

Hey HN, I haven't done a lot of technical postmortem blogpost-style writing so I'd welcome any feedback or tips on how to improve. Is it too long, too short, too technical, not technical enough? Boring? Interesting? Is it enlightening or does it just come off like content marketing? I literally have no idea how good I am at this.

Your blog post was excellent. Thank you to share.

    Is it too long, too short, too technical, not technical enough? Boring? Interesting? Is it enlightening or does it just come off like content marketing
Long, but well-organized and not ranty. You can quit after a few sections and still learn interesting things. Technical enough with enough screenshots to keep it from being "wall of text". It is a good way to share some eye candy from your games. [E]nlightening? Yes. [C]ome off like content marketing? Yes, but this is the kind that we want to read -- basically, interesting content marketing. Don't be ashamed that you need to hustle a little bit as a small software shop.

Oh, and you forgot funny. This part made me laugh:

    Flash stores its vector graphics in XML format. You might argue that XML is a poor choice for graphics data, but you weren't a product manager at Macromedia. Behold: ...

Re: I still use Flash

#383

Post by throwaway2037 »

japhib wrote: post #205
dontwearitout wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash was my 2nd programming language (after VB6) back when it was still Macromedia. I had a lot of fun making really crappy minigames and learning the basics of coding. This article brought some good nostalgia and plenty of astonishment at the lengths you went to. Your writing itself is great. A lot of writing linked by HN seems too verbose because people try to sound smart. Yours is succinct while engaging. Right l…

Object-orientation is kind of the old-school way of doing things, these days it's all about ECS - entity component system. This is a more data-oriented approach that has the potential for much higher performance when you have thousands of objects that need updating in your game. It's similar to how OO languages like Java/C# are going out of style and more (nominally, at least) data-oriented languages such as Go or Ru…

Is ECS similar to Data Oriented Programming?

I watched this talk years ago: CppCon 2014: Mike Acton "Data-Oriented Design and C++"

I was very impressed by the ideas presented.

Java/C# can be used to write a program with "just a bunch of structs + static methods". Isn't that data-oriented enough? Ya, I know we can do 72 levels of inheritance also... for ignore that for a moment.

Re: I still use Flash

#384

Post by white_dragon88 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #380
wackget wrote: post #332

> Uploading achievements to Steam is a pain. You can't just define a list and give it to their command-line tools; you have to laboriously click through the slow, confusing miasma of PHP sadness that is the Steam partner site and add them one by one. > I think if you're a big important game studio you don't have to stand for that and they give you a bulk upload tool, but I'm not one of those so I looked at the HTTP c…

> Read question: Can this be automated with Selenium? For a long time I was using very low level Chrome DevTools libraries. Then I switched to Selenium. It is so impressive. It actually works, without weird 1-5% failures that you waste time chasing... then adding small sleeps to make it smooth and working.

[dead]

Re: I still use Flash

#385

Post by tracker1 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #380
wackget wrote: post #332

> Uploading achievements to Steam is a pain. You can't just define a list and give it to their command-line tools; you have to laboriously click through the slow, confusing miasma of PHP sadness that is the Steam partner site and add them one by one. > I think if you're a big important game studio you don't have to stand for that and they give you a bulk upload tool, but I'm not one of those so I looked at the HTTP c…

> Read question: Can this be automated with Selenium? For a long time I was using very low level Chrome DevTools libraries. Then I switched to Selenium. It is so impressive. It actually works, without weird 1-5% failures that you waste time chasing... then adding small sleeps to make it smooth and working.

I would suggest playwright or puppeteer myself. It uses the dev communication channel for chrome(ium)/firefox and works much better, even if you're limited to JS... there's a Deno port of puppeteer if you want to avoid some of the node.js bits for (imho) a cleaner experience.

Re: I still use Flash

#386

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #288
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fail to compete and you'll be left behind in terms of compensation, performance review rankings, and career growth, the last of which also limits your future job choices. It also puts you nearer the top of the list for layoffs when corporate finances get tight.

You must live with a lot of fear. I am sorry.

Why? I'm in a good place, thanks to awareness of risks and preparedness. Save your pity for those who fail to heed my words.

Re: I still use Flash

#387

Post by ThunderSizzle »

MrJohz wrote: post #309
falcolas wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thinking is this - less than half of the population in the US holds a traditional job. 150M or so. And a vast majority of those are not jobs related to "essential" work. They're largely part of the retail and administrative workforce. And so, if a majority of less than half of the US population is working unnecessary jobs (i.e. only valuable to our economy)... how much of what we do is really valuable to us as a s…

There's a big leap there though from "non-traditional" to "not necessary". A colleague of mine is working on a project involving ensuring that farmers can track their feed and illness statistics correctly to improve their yields. It's not a traditional job, but it's absolutely necessary to ensure that (for example) the dairy industry can provide enough milk. (And moreover, to reduce the number of people who need to b…

> A colleague of mine is working on a project involving ensuring that farmers can track their feed and illness statistics correctly to improve their yields.

I doubt that's an example of a job/project that isn't just pure administrative burden. Even your example of a t-shirt printing company is more than just pure administrative burden - people need t-shirts, and people like their t-shirts to have art of some form. While art may be a luxury, it is also pleasant and required to some extent.

However, there are some roles that are pure administrative burden, and I tend to think the GP is correct that these roles are a lot more prevalent than we want to admit. I think the 80/20 rule could be applicable here - only 20% of the population produces 80% of the wealth (read: essential or luxury items) while the other 80% of the world are stumbling on themselves in bureaucracy to maybe make the rest of the remaining 20%.

Re: I still use Flash

#388

Post by rchaud »

TylerGlaiel wrote: post #193

Flash is great and tons of devs still use flash. I also use flash in my custom game engine (the one powering The End is Nigh and the upcoming Mewgenics), a different approach to what the dev in this article did (seeing as these are new games and not ports of existing flash games), my approach is to load SWF files as the resource files for art and animation in my game, and render them as vector. Flash puts a lot of in…

would love to see a blog post about this! With Flash now discontinued, it's interesting to see how it's being kept alive.

Re: I still use Flash

#389

Post by rchaud »

kortilla wrote: post #258
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fail to compete and you'll be left behind in terms of compensation, performance review rankings, and career growth, the last of which also limits your future job choices. It also puts you nearer the top of the list for layoffs when corporate finances get tight.

But those things shouldn’t bother you if you aren’t interested in the “more more more” society. It’s easy to get a stable programming job in the US that pays $80k and has very little lay-off risk. You can’t have it both ways complaining about being left behind in comp while not participating in the grind that allows those comps to go higher.

Participating in the grind however means tossing away millions of employee-hours on paper-pushing jobs that don't really accomplish much, either in terms of personal development or corporate benefit. This is being evidenced almost daily by wave after wave of layoffs for the relatively well-heeled tech industry.

Re: I still use Flash

#390

Post by uxp100 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #273
kortilla wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those things shouldn’t bother you if you aren’t interested in the “more more more” society. It’s easy to get a stable programming job in the US that pays $80k and has very little lay-off risk. You can’t have it both ways complaining about being left behind in comp while not participating in the grind that allows those comps to go higher.

Lower paid jobs can be worse. That they can’t afford to pay you more might mean they are doing something noble but usually it is a wannabe growth startup being badly run and pushing down pressure on lower waged staff to compensate. But you have a point: at 80k requirement you could easily freelance to earn that, for non technical people. Help set up shopify stores etc. and not need to constantly be on a learning grin…

I don’t think wanna be growth startup is really typical. Typical lower, but not that low paid tech job is more like maintain software tooling that supports mechanical engineers testing, or aids insurance appraisal, or replacing ladder logic industrial automation with something that has more iot type features (and still might be partially ladder logic). Probably all those pay 80k-100k to someone with a few years experience. The downsides are dingy offices that you’ll have to show up in sometimes, and for the last one, potentially lots of travel to not too exciting places.
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