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The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

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Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#151

Post by dilap »

BatFastard wrote: post #135
dilap wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs' position was they couldn't make flash run acceptably on mobile devices, so they never allowed it. Looking at how Flash turned out on Android, I think history shows he was right. Rereading Jobs' letter from years ago, basically all of it stands solid. https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ Remember when basically everyone was using flash to play video? Would we really be in a better place if that had c…

>Jobs' position was they couldn't make flash run acceptably on mobile devices, so they never allowed it. I have a bridge to sell you too! He took that position so that everything would be forced to go thru the app store. Flash apps can run on iOS right now, but they have to go thru the app store. People wrote a TON for flash games, most of it was shit, but some was amazing and creative. Much like what you see in the…

I find the arguments convincing because they make sense to me. There's 0% of me as an iPhone user that's like, "man, I wish Apple had done more to extend the lifetime of flash."

And think about it: If Apple's only goal were to push people to the App Store, why bother to build a mobile browser with good html5 support? Why add a special mode where you could add websites to the home screen as icons, and they'd show up just like normal apps, launching into full-screen mode w/o chrome?

Maybe I'm buying bridges, but I take Jobs' at his word in the flash letter.

(Though, no doubt! Apple does love having ultimate control via the App Store.

(Which, as a completely separate topic, is terrible. They censor the whole thing to a PG-13 level and reject apps for arbitrary political reasons (e.g., a drone-strike notification app, Gab).

(It's truly a shame that the most important medium of our time is run like a totalitarian state.)

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#152

Post by blueprint »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #131
blueprint wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great as long as you don't care about reusing your code. It's not just biz logic, services, utils, etc either, I'm talking about the fact that people put UIViews over SpriteKit games all the time and you can't rightly say that doesn't exist just because you get to downvote me.

Firstly, I didn't downvote you. Secondly, I don't know what point you're trying to prove. The people that create frameworks for Haxe have their own priorities, if those priorities don't align with your own that doesn't mean they lack merit for those that use them. Haxe has been used to create a number of successful apps and games. Instead of just looking for weaknesses, try also looking for strengths, try understandi…

I'm not sure why you responded if you didn't get my point then, but let's assume you're asking me in good faith. All I'm saying is that your premise of "write once, run anywhere" is still not true for everyone, everywhere. So I don't see why I have to accept it as if I'm being unfair to someone. I think it's not honest when people are not upfront about hidden limitations to their promises which are going to have material effects on the future. We ought not to sweep this problem under the rug when we have the chance to solve it. I don't buy that people have entirely their own priorities. We all need a solution to this problem, but who wants to dedicate their life to making "learn once write anywhere" an actual reality? Especially when the developers of top platforms "have their own priorities". Go ahead and call me esoteric but I guess I just prefer it if projects didn't overhype their capabilities when I'm supposed to be evaluating them for security- and business-sensitive contexts. :P

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#153

Post by exikyut »

austincheney wrote: post #149
floatboth wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. JavaScript is also a compile target in a sandbox. Emscripten started with outputting plain JS, then that was optimized to asm.js, now optimized to WASM. I completely agree that WASM should NOT replace JS for normal DOM apps. It's currently possible through awkward calls into JS, and might be possible in the future more directly, but there's no need t…

> WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. No, it does not. Compiling to WASM is not a replacement or synonym for compiling to JavaScript. JavaScript is not locked in a sandbox, in the same way, as it has a multitude of APIs. WASM does not have such APIs as it is just the sandbox. Here is the deal. All modern browsers now claim to support WASM. If WASM were capable of replacing JavaScript i…

I'm starting to get fed up by the open-ended trust models used by most forum software on the internet.

slashdot started in 1997. phpBB was started in 2000. 4chan accidentally in 2003. reddit was put together in 2005. HN was created in 2007.

I think 2007-2010 was a tipping point where people started to collectively get smarter and more sophisticated on the Web. I'm not saying everyone was dumb before that, but that... you needed to be more cynical and you couldn't just depend on something's ridiculousness to know whether it was fake or not.

4chan maintained a troll mentality that made it obvious some things were real and some were not, and many people there there knows not to believe everything they see - maybe not a 51% majority, but just enough that the integrity of an awareness culture is maintained.

HN got started around the tipping point I just described, which might explain why it's lasted a while.

But all the others... they're based on old ideas, old notions of trust. The culture is based on openness and contemporaneously broken interpretations of the idea of freedom of speech - so anybody gets on there and declaratively makes their point, and everyone believes them like it's tort law and utterly official.

Maybe that's why reddit gets blamed for being a hivemind.

Not quite sure if I'm talking hot air through ten hats here, but I'm just mad there isn't an IQ test to be casually involved in tech because EVERYONE has such crippling levels of "oh no I don't understand this so I'll just believe this thing here and won't fact-check it for myself". At least on reddit this seems to be the case.

Yes, that's really harsh, but I see it as the facts of the situation. If I'm wrong please do let me know.

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#154

Post by jchw »

blueprint wrote: post #108
jchw wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen Flutter.io? I haven't tried it but it sounds like the framework for you.

Well, it's kind of an issue, because it's a similar argument for platforms like Xamarin. A third party still has to keep up with mainline. That means another layer of support, maintenance, dependency… which is not always an issue… but practically speaking is one of the things you eliminate at scale and / or in the rigors of production.

Fair enough; it still seems pretty promising, especially because my experience developing native Android apps did not make me feel confident in doing very advanced UIs with native Android - it just feels complicated, and the compatibility layer stuff seems like no fun. (I had trouble linking the jars in for reasons I was not able to fully understand. I've worked with Java stuff before, but the Android toolchain still has me confused.)

I hope that Flutter, with its massive backing, manages to stay up to date with mainline without putting too much burden on app developers. We'll see I suppose.

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#155

Post by jay_kyburz »

baldfat wrote: post #17
jchw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haxe is pretty interesting. I really wish strongly that it was more polished and had a larger ecosystem, because it feels like a nice development environment and is quite nice to code in.

I don't think it is that small ecosystem. It may be used in gaming mostly but it has a very strong success record. I also have decided upon Haxe (Godot is still in the running) for educational activities I am building) Some very strong Indie games have been made in Haxe already. EA and Zynga us it for their mobile games and OpenFL has many children web games made with Haxe. https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/

I love Godots Python like language. Its kind of disappointing to see the C# stuff take centre stage.

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#156

Post by kpcyrd »

Someone wrote: post #74
kpcyrd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minified javascript isn't really open source either.

Non-minified JavaScript with good comments documenting its behavior isn’t (necessarily) open source either. That you can read the code (or that it doesn’t claim a license) doesn’t make code open source.

Sure, but that definition of opensource wasn't implied with "closed source due to wasm".

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#157

Post by ivansavz »

floatboth wrote: post #146
ivansavz wrote: post #4

Does anyone know of tools I can use to convert simple .swf animations to html + .js? I did a thorough research and found Swiffy (discontinued by google) and Shumway (discontinued by mozilla). All the other tools seem to require original source code to be available, which we don't have... (Context: educational animations for early childhood, e.g., cool numeracy animations with sounds and colors for kids to learn to do…

"Discontinued" does not mean "they don't work". Have you tried them?

Swiffy was offered as an API and is no longer available, so can't try.

I tried reading the Shumway docs + follow the build instructions but got nowhere. I think it was meant to be used as a plugin for firefox (to emulate Flash runtime). I have it a whole day and got nowhere, so I'll count that in the tried-but-failed category.

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#158

Post by fenomas »

ryandrake wrote: post #85
theandrewbailey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worked at/near Adobe or the Flash source, but I figured 3rd party licensing was the case.

I've always disliked this excuse. Software licenses are negotiated with third parties, not handed down from god. If Adobe really thought it would be advantageous and profitable to open source Flash, wouldn't they have gone back and renegotiated these licenses? "We'd love to do Xyz, bbbbbut licenses!" doesn't really make sense.

> wouldn't they have gone back and renegotiated these licenses?

Why assume they didn't try?

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#159

Post by ternaryoperator »

ryandrake wrote: post #85
theandrewbailey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worked at/near Adobe or the Flash source, but I figured 3rd party licensing was the case.

I've always disliked this excuse. Software licenses are negotiated with third parties, not handed down from god. If Adobe really thought it would be advantageous and profitable to open source Flash, wouldn't they have gone back and renegotiated these licenses? "We'd love to do Xyz, bbbbbut licenses!" doesn't really make sense.

You greatly underestimate how much work it is to negotiate licenses among major vendors, much less renegotiate an existing license.

Re: The Death of Flash and Rewriting 1.4M Lines of Code

#160

Post by johncolanduoni »

austincheney wrote: post #137
tomovo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. If you already use Javascript, WASM won't be much help. But WASM lets you compile C/C++ and with a bit more effort other languages into a bytecode instead of weird looking Javascript, or its more streamlined and still weird form, asm.js.

> WASM replaces Javascript as the target of other language compilers. Ugggh, still no evidence. WASM is a compile target in a sandbox. It is the new Flash or Java applet. Everything else is a wish list from people incredibly insecure about touching JavaScript. So far any advocation that WASM will magically replace JavaScript severely misunderstands both WASM and JavaScript. I will continue to await something more tha…

Nobody was claiming that WASM would replace JavaScript in general, magically or otherwise. I think there's reason to believe it will replace asm.js since it's already being integrated into Emscripten and the major browsers have already landed support in their stable releases.

I find comparing it to Flash or Java applets weird, given the fact that you clearly understand that it doesn't interact with the outside world using any WASM-specific APIs. Both Flash and Java applets could in theory interact with the outside world only via a JavaScript wrapper but that was never the use case they were aimed towards either in theory or practice. Flash and Java applets also used languages that map much better to JavaScript's execution and memory models than C/C++ do, so the APIs were a big part of what you were getting by going that route (especially in Flash's case, where you had to learn a totally different programming language just for Flash).

Unless you consider people who using things like Node.js or Electron to be "insecure about touching C/C++" I don't see where you get off saying that about people who want to use WASM. Sometimes you have existing code or expertise in a certain language, or it simply fits your problem better.

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