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I think the article completely missed the trend towards mobile devices. Also it fails to take into account the propietary nature of Flash and the fact it's loo

I think the article completely missed the trend towards mobile devices. Also it fails to take into account the propietary nature of Flash and the fact it's look and feel doesn't fit the 'web experience' (users like to copy and paste text, etc. and don't want the UX to be different on each site). Oh dear. Looks like UIE are still in business though - you can't predict every trend. I remember an investment bank in London building their whole trading platform in Adobe Flex. They really thought this was the future and spent literally millions on it. I am not sure what's happening now, but good luck resourcing and maintaining that project. I imagine someone has just asked for a whole lot of cash to rewrite in HTML5, because you know standards, multi-device compatibility, etc. are important!

jaimex2 11y ago
What are you on about, HTML5? This was written in 2002, when a Nokia 3210 was bleeding edge, AJAX wasn't a thing and everything was written in PHP and JAVA Applets.
- planetjones 11y ago
  The second paragraph wasn't dated - that was about 2009 when my friend was trying to encourage me to apply to join this fledgling Flex team - so even after 2002 people were still following the Flash / Flex mantra.
  - est 11y ago
    still, Flex is better than the crowds embraced Silverlight™.
    - simonh 11y ago
      Possibly the most mistimed technology introduction in the history of computing. Any other candidates out there?
  - bshimmin 11y ago
    I'd say that in 2008-2009, Flex, for that sort of application, wasn't necessarily a bad bet. Most people date Flash's demise to the start of the mainstream smartphone movement, but the first iPhone was only released in mid-2007 - obviously it had no Flash support, but it notably didn't have a lot of other things too (like copy and paste!), so it wasn't immediately obvious that it would never get Flash; and the Android devices that followed the iPhone did support Flash (it was even touted as a differentiator from iOS devices), albeit poorly. Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" piece was published in 2010 and that probably did hammer a few nails in the Flash coffin, at least in terms of public awareness. I think if you were betting big - millions of pounds big - in mid-2010 on Flash, you could be accused of making a silly mistake. Before that, I think it's more forgivable. Flex was always bunk, if you ask me, but it did some of the same things that people like about Angular, with the addition of a bunch of (fairly poor) UI components. In theory you could build business-oriented / data-driven applications with it quite easily, so finance was very much its intended audience.
    - robmcm 11y ago
      There is a tendency to group all flash content together, if you break it out into say: Websites (typically micro sights) Banner adverts Creative websites Games Video players Audio players Applications Desktop AIR applications Mobile AIR applications Web site components Each use case has a date when they became a bad bet, some never were. Even today web components (shims/polly fills) are written in flash and are acceptable.
testrun 11y ago
Flex is now Apache Flex, and still running on Mac OS, iOS, Windows and Android (Using Flash or AIR). And Flex is now open source (been for a while, like in a couple of years).
robmcm 11y ago
I currently work for an investment bank in London on a trading platform written in Adobe Flex. Resourcing and recruiting isn't actually much of an issue as while the pool of developers is small they are also highly skilled and specific to the target platform and business. We have JavaScript migration plans, but for something with so many developers and hundreds of thousands of lines of code the tools are only really reaching the required maturity. In terms of "because you know standards, multi-device compatibility, etc. are important!" this is actually not very important, we have native mobile applications and there is zero chance you would run a desktop app on a mobile device without the majority of the code being different. The main driver is security concerns with the Flash player.

jaimex2 11y ago

What are you on about, HTML5? This was written in 2002, when a Nokia 3210 was bleeding edge, AJAX wasn't a thing and everything was written in PHP and JAVA Applets.

planetjones 11y ago
The second paragraph wasn't dated - that was about 2009 when my friend was trying to encourage me to apply to join this fledgling Flex team - so even after 2002 people were still following the Flash / Flex mantra.
- est 11y ago
  still, Flex is better than the crowds embraced Silverlight™.
  - simonh 11y ago
    Possibly the most mistimed technology introduction in the history of computing. Any other candidates out there?
- bshimmin 11y ago
  I'd say that in 2008-2009, Flex, for that sort of application, wasn't necessarily a bad bet. Most people date Flash's demise to the start of the mainstream smartphone movement, but the first iPhone was only released in mid-2007 - obviously it had no Flash support, but it notably didn't have a lot of other things too (like copy and paste!), so it wasn't immediately obvious that it would never get Flash; and the Android devices that followed the iPhone did support Flash (it was even touted as a differentiator from iOS devices), albeit poorly. Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" piece was published in 2010 and that probably did hammer a few nails in the Flash coffin, at least in terms of public awareness. I think if you were betting big - millions of pounds big - in mid-2010 on Flash, you could be accused of making a silly mistake. Before that, I think it's more forgivable. Flex was always bunk, if you ask me, but it did some of the same things that people like about Angular, with the addition of a bunch of (fairly poor) UI components. In theory you could build business-oriented / data-driven applications with it quite easily, so finance was very much its intended audience.
  - robmcm 11y ago
    There is a tendency to group all flash content together, if you break it out into say: Websites (typically micro sights) Banner adverts Creative websites Games Video players Audio players Applications Desktop AIR applications Mobile AIR applications Web site components Each use case has a date when they became a bad bet, some never were. Even today web components (shims/polly fills) are written in flash and are acceptable.

testrun 11y ago

Flex is now Apache Flex, and still running on Mac OS, iOS, Windows and Android (Using Flash or AIR). And Flex is now open source (been for a while, like in a couple of years).

robmcm 11y ago

I currently work for an investment bank in London on a trading platform written in Adobe Flex. Resourcing and recruiting isn't actually much of an issue as while the pool of developers is small they are also highly skilled and specific to the target platform and business. We have JavaScript migration plans, but for something with so many developers and hundreds of thousands of lines of code the tools are only really reaching the required maturity. In terms of "because you know standards, multi-device compatibility, etc. are important!" this is actually not very important, we have native mobile applications and there is zero chance you would run a desktop app on a mobile device without the majority of the code being different. The main driver is security concerns with the Flash player.