41–50 of 52 posts
I have lost faith in Adobe because they cannot get their products working on case sensitive HFS volumes. The problem has existed for almost a decade I think. The fact that one cannot install Creative Suite on another volume makes it even worse.
For some perspective, the Flash Player code base is almost 20 years old and must maintain binary compatibility with ancient content (because many websites have binary .swf files without the .fla source files). Flash is likely the world's most installed software when you consider that most Windows and Mac and Android devices have Flash.
A big problem with all things Flash-related is that Adobe was rather half-hearted in its commitment to making Flash open so the documentation was never quite as polished as it could be. Another problem which probably the source of the frustration in the original post is that functionality was added rather than existing code upgraded. That probably meant that the existing code along with all the warts was left untouched rather than run the risk of making breaking changes.
The "interesting stuff like jumps past the end of function" were I think attempts at obfuscation since decompiling flash files and actipnscript is not very difficult. Another example was to append actionscript byte-codes at the end of a table used for strings and amend the length of the table to hide the code. The following actionscript byte-codes could then add jump into this hidden code which would hopefully but not successfully confuse the decompilers.
Why am I not surprised this is about bugs in Flash? It ain't much better on the artist side. The UI revision after the Adobe/Macromedia suit was so bad it was one of the major reasons I left the animation industry. My friends who stayed have AMAZING piles of helper scripts to patch it up and make it halfway usable.
What are the amazing piles of helper scripts intended to patch up an UI revision consisting of?
This is just a subjective feeling, but back in the 90ies, everyone seems to have been producing code with only one goal in mind: have the compiled output work well enough so it can be shipped. There was next to no automated testing, there was some theoretical best practice, but at least in the windows world nobody cared. Heck, back in the days there weren't even multiple accounts on a machine, nor were there file sys…
He's critical of the compiler's optimization and the efficiency of the code, but doesn't Flash have an embedded JIT, which effectively means the byte codes are pre-compilation, and actions that might seem like optimizations would potentially make the JIT's life far more difficult?
(ternary (false) (integer 15) (integer 15))
Why am I not surprised this is about bugs in Flash? It ain't much better on the artist side. The UI revision after the Adobe/Macromedia suit was so bad it was one of the major reasons I left the animation industry. My friends who stayed have AMAZING piles of helper scripts to patch it up and make it halfway usable.
One of your major reasons for leaving an entire industry is because of a UI revision in ONE of your software tools? Surely you are exaggerating. What are the amazing piles of helper scripts intended to patch up an UI revision consisting of?
And you HAVE to update to this new tool because the files saved by it are incompatible with the old versions; if you're gonna interoperate with other folks you have to somehow deal with this maddening new behavior.
I was already coming to feel that I would never have the joy of working on my own stories and creations because I didn't have the burning drive and social skills to claw my way to running a show. All that was left of animation to me was the joy of making things come to life. And this UI change made that a death of a thousand cuts instead.
The helper scripts are a lot of macros to automate common usage patterns, and a few plugins to create new palettes. I can't remember the exact details; this was a whirlwind tour of Cartoon Network's working methods when I was staying at their head Flash director's place for a funeral.
He's critical of the compiler's optimization and the efficiency of the code, but doesn't Flash have an embedded JIT, which effectively means the byte codes are pre-compilation, and actions that might seem like optimizations would potentially make the JIT's life far more difficult?
How does (ternary (false) (integer 15) (integer 15)) help JIT?
Think of the output of the flash compiler as being like the output of the C processor. Then it makes more sense.
This is just a subjective feeling, but back in the 90ies, everyone seems to have been producing code with only one goal in mind: have the compiled output work well enough so it can be shipped. There was next to no automated testing, there was some theoretical best practice, but at least in the windows world nobody cared. Heck, back in the days there weren't even multiple accounts on a machine, nor were there file sys…
Now I know the reason why I felt uncomfortable about ActionScript. Flash folks were always convincing me that AS3 is perfectly fine and kickass language. Next time I'll just link this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does (ternary (false) (integer 15) (integer 15)) help JIT?
Probably doesn't help it. Probably doesn't hurt it either though. I'm sure the JIT realizes the whole operation is pointless and just replaces it with what is effectively (integer 15). It did look like there were bits of instructions put in there to make it easier for the JIT to see where certain boundaries/behaviours were in the code, and maybe this is one of them. Or it could be something stupid that just makes it…
It might only seem like a little turd on the sideway that you can easily step over, but quite evidently in the case of flash little things like these have added up and its performance is now -- in the metaphorical sense -- up to its neck in shit.