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Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

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Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#91

Post by waneck »

npsimons wrote: post #77

I like haXe, I really do, but for me, it's seriously lacking in libraries. It's all well and good to have everything you need to make games and displace Flash (everywhere!), but for instance, I can't just clone a GPX parser ( https://github.com/tkrajina/gpxpy ), pull in some other Python mapping stuff ( http://sensitivecities.com/so-youd-like-to-make-a-map-using-... ) and frontend it with another cross platform "lang…

With Haxe/Java and Haxe/C# you can use any Java or C# library directly from haxe (with -net-lib and -java-lib)

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#92

Post by mercer »

oscargrouch wrote: post #78
mercer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real question is why do we let people to abuse technology instead of using it well. I am (still!) amazed by the gap between how I see a computer and how most non-geeks around me do. To them, it's like a set of different, often frustrating tools rather than, well, an amazing piece of technology that can be prodded to do whatever you want (to the point where an iPad with few to no apps can provide them with all t…

Or we might look the other way around and see that the "technologists" are the ones to blame for not make things easear for non-tech people.. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are masters here, and little to no one newcomers learn some good usability and simplicity lessons from them.. the complexity in tech are only getting worse, and eventually will require "saviors", wich are the ones people will praise for, and the tools…

My comment was just observational. I agree with you completely. Especially after watching Brett Victor's videos and reading his articles I've come to realize that while a lot of progress has been made to make computers mass-accessible, there is an incredible amount of stuff we can and will still do.

Personally, that excites me. Every once in a while I still marvel at the slab of plastic and glass in my hand that does all these amazing things, even after having had a tablet for years now. Then I marvel at the thought that I, singlehandedly and at virtually no cost (that I wouldn't have otherwise), can create an app for the thing that even my grandmother could download and use.

Hell, I marvel at the mere fact that everyone around me has a computer, uses chat applications, and carries around a PDA everywhere. There was a time where I was the only one like that and even embarrassed about it in public.

We've come very far, and I can't wait to see what comes next (wearables, probably).

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#93

Post by Toenex »

zacharypinter wrote: post #47

> I've been a stalwart Flash developer for 15 years, so nothing bothers me more than greatly exaggerated reports of Flash's premature demise. ... > I've learned my lesson -- whatever my next platform is, no-one should be able to take it away from me. There's an interesting side discussion here. It seems to me that the rate of substantial changes in technology/frameworks/ui design/etc is increasing such that the expec…

I have yet to find a better strategy than to try to "ride the wave".

My strategy also. I'm in my mid forties now and have always seen the language/platform as a way to exercise my development skills. Like many things the trick is timing, when to sit up and take serious notice of a new language/platform.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#94

Post by bsaul »

larsiusprime wrote: post #84
zacharypinter wrote: post #47

> I've been a stalwart Flash developer for 15 years, so nothing bothers me more than greatly exaggerated reports of Flash's premature demise. ... > I've learned my lesson -- whatever my next platform is, no-one should be able to take it away from me. There's an interesting side discussion here. It seems to me that the rate of substantial changes in technology/frameworks/ui design/etc is increasing such that the expec…

Kind of the entire point of Haxe is that you don't have to find/predict the stack that will last the longest, because whenever the hot new thing emerges... you just add a new Haxe target for it.

i don't think the language is what matters most when talking about technology. The platform is the important thing. When coding on iOS or Android, learning Objective-C or Java isn't the longest thing to learn. Learning the framework objects and patterns is really what matters. Same goes for HTML5, node, Ruby on Rails, etc... A computer language is very rarely using more than 50 language constructs (operators + keywords), which could easily be learned in less than a few days.

Haxe doesn't solve this issue i think (and nothing can).

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#95

Post by davidgerard »

Flash is animation software. That people write games in it is a function of its past ubiquity and a symptom of the dangers of Turing completeness. Actually coding in Flash is unbelievably horrible. This is like an announcement of a well-supported cross-platform Brainfuck kit.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#96

Post by davidgerard »

leccine wrote: post #32
sdfjkl wrote: post #7

It's not Flash that is dead, it's the whole concept of browser plugins. Too risky, too inconvenient, too often installed and then forgotten, never to receive security updates (or those that exist aren't installed because they prompt us about it far too often).

This is exactly why security conscious people don't use flash. Html is supposed to be a document and not an application. We created this Frankenstein with Flash, Java and JS to make HTML pages appear other than documents. The net result is that you need to install these plugins otherwise you can't get the full experience. The real question is why do we let people to abuse technology instead of using it well. I have d…

>Html is supposed to be a document and not an application.

That was TimBL's intention, but that ship sailed in 1995.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#98

Post by egypturnash »

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #89
Kequc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> finding a platform that you can hold on to for 15 years is becoming untenable. I would think so. It only became clear that Ruby would be viable for jobs about 7-8 years ago. It is used absolutely all over the place right now, true. But it is going to be competing against Google's V8 pretty much directly, and that, well that is not winnable. Adobe Flash has been around for so long that Wikipedia doesn't mention when…

I remember it back in 1996 when it was called "future splash". the first major website to use it was simpsons.com, with the major selling point that the drawings could be done with vectors and thus be quicker to download than hefty GIFs or JPGs. it was "just" a vector image format. Nothing about apps or interactivity. People (especially flash devs) give HTML5 a lot of flack now for not being a "real" "viable" platfor…

When I was doing professional web cartoons in Flash in 2000, Macromedia's general response to our complaints like "The editor falls over and dies on big files" was "it's not for that, it's for making little interactive thingies".

Fast forward a few years and there are network TV cartoons being done with Flash. Though it's a hell of a lot easier when you can render out video and stick it together instead of trying to put everything into one SWF for delivery over a 19.2k modem.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#99

Post by egypturnash »

davidgerard wrote: post #95

Flash is animation software . That people write games in it is a function of its past ubiquity and a symptom of the dangers of Turing completeness. Actually coding in Flash is unbelievably horrible . This is like an announcement of a well-supported cross-platform Brainfuck kit.

Flash has not been able to decide if it's animation software or a software platform for pretty much the entire time I've used it. When I was doing web animation back in 2000, Macromedia's response to complaints about the editor crashing like crazy when dealing with the ~20M source files involved in making 3-4 minute cartoons was basically "don't use it for that, it's for making little interactive widgets".

Oh yeah, and animating in Flash is often pretty horrible too.

Re: Flash is dead, long live OpenFL

#100

Post by e12e »

perturbation wrote: post #60

From the default linux install script for OpenFL ( http://www.openfl.org/haxe-3.1.1-linux-installer.tar.gz ): # Set up haxelib sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/haxe/lib sudo chmod -R 777 /usr/lib/haxe/lib sudo haxelib setup /usr/lib/haxe/lib This isn't as bad as I originally thought; I tested this, and only that directory itself is world-writable (the sub-directories from haxe install foo are universally readable and executabl…

Oh, I remember seeing this last time I looked at this. I generally don't like seeing sudo/su in a script like this at all -- and especially not something that goes an messes with LSB-locations like /usr/lib.

FWIW, the actual software is download by the script, eg: http://haxe.org/file/haxe-3.1.1-linux64.tar.gz

For something that is aimed at developers, one would think this stuff installed under /usr/local or /opt (benefit of /usr/local is that most(?) distributions set up PATH,MANPATH, various link/library paths etc to include /usr/local. Benefit of /opt is keeping the package well "out of the way".

World writeable directories without a sticky-bit is generally just wrong -- under /usr/lib it's pretty terrible.

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