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It's the web. It runs HTML, CSS and JS. Why? Is there some first-principles thing here? What if Flash was open sourced, massively cleaned up, changed to be sea

It's the web. It runs HTML, CSS and JS. Why? Is there some first-principles thing here? What if Flash was open sourced, massively cleaned up, changed to be search friendly, and ended up with well curated app marketplaces and code signing? The language Flash used had a shared heritage with JS, and actually did a better job of providing "just works" write once, run everywhere. Many Smalltalk variants had a practically bulletproof write once, run everywhere record of performance. What if properly code signed and sandboxed Smalltalk plugins had won? That could well have resulted in a more open web than what we ended up with. Wanting to code your web app in anything else is... I don't know... petulant? Why? There are currently exactly zero Front End Developers who write usable web front ends in Go. If the developer experience becomes a lot more like developing against a desktop UI framework, there are a ton of experienced older developers who could quickly jump in. It's not rocket science. Actually, in many ways, desktop development is easier than the web front end. For that matter, why not build something which is 1-to-1 isomorphic with React? (EDIT: I see now, that's already sort of the direction they're going for!) I'm not sure moving to a Go front end is wise for another few years. Which I would interpret as a sign that it's the right time to jump in to be a pioneer!

untog 7y ago
> actually did a better job of providing "just works" write once, run everywhere. It did, for its time. But there's a tremendous amount of work done in scaling UIs between mobile and desktop viewports on the web that Flash could never easily achieve, and most native frameworks are still struggling with today. > If the developer experience becomes a lot more like developing against a desktop UI framework ... then the mobile experience is crap, yeah.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  But there's a tremendous amount of work done in scaling UIs between mobile and desktop viewports on the web that Flash could never easily achieve, and most native frameworks are still struggling with today. Keep in mind that Flash was effectively abandoned/deprecated. Again, there's nothing first principles here. The greater effectiveness of MacOS in dealing with scaling UIs is a demonstration of this. > If the developer experience becomes a lot more like developing against a desktop UI framework ... then the mobile experience is crap, yeah. Credit where credit is due. Look at what Apple has achieved in terms of this. In a way, the argument tactic is straw-manning here. Instead of picking a few glaring errors from past frameworks, shouldn't we be looking at the best of what existing frameworks can do, and try to build that?
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Flash lives on as Animate CC https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html
marcus_holmes 7y ago
petulant (and I'm still not sure that's the right word for it) because instead of learning the technology that everyone else (i.e. the standards bodies that decide these things) decides is what we're doing now, you gotta do something different. Not better, but different. Flash was proprietary tech. Eventually Adobe would have worked this out and owned the internet. You can't have proprietary tech underpinning everything. The story of video codecs bears this out. I developed a ton of desktop UI in Visual Basic. It was easy. But I didn't have to allow for random screen sizes, random browsers, random OS's, random accessibility problems, rarely had to allow for random languages (and that was difficult), and I had a synchronous back end that I could wait for between clicks. Sorry, but the difference between desktop and web UI is huge, and underestimating that gap is a major cause of bad web UI.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Pretty easy with VB.NET and WPF/UWP. The desktop world has long moved from fixed layouts from VB 6 and lower. Since 2001 actually, given that even Forms has a layout manager.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  petulant (and I'm still not sure that's the right word for it) because instead of learning the technology that everyone else (i.e. the standards bodies that decide these things) decides is what we're doing now, you gotta do something different. Not better, but different. You don't get better, if you don't try different. In terms of clarity and expressive power, I would say that Smalltalk is a step above Javascript.

untog 7y ago

> actually did a better job of providing "just works" write once, run everywhere. It did, for its time. But there's a tremendous amount of work done in scaling UIs between mobile and desktop viewports on the web that Flash could never easily achieve, and most native frameworks are still struggling with today. > If the developer experience becomes a lot more like developing against a desktop UI framework ... then the mobile experience is crap, yeah.

stcredzero 7y ago
But there's a tremendous amount of work done in scaling UIs between mobile and desktop viewports on the web that Flash could never easily achieve, and most native frameworks are still struggling with today. Keep in mind that Flash was effectively abandoned/deprecated. Again, there's nothing first principles here. The greater effectiveness of MacOS in dealing with scaling UIs is a demonstration of this. > If the developer experience becomes a lot more like developing against a desktop UI framework ... then the mobile experience is crap, yeah. Credit where credit is due. Look at what Apple has achieved in terms of this. In a way, the argument tactic is straw-manning here. Instead of picking a few glaring errors from past frameworks, shouldn't we be looking at the best of what existing frameworks can do, and try to build that?
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Flash lives on as Animate CC https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html

marcus_holmes 7y ago

petulant (and I'm still not sure that's the right word for it) because instead of learning the technology that everyone else (i.e. the standards bodies that decide these things) decides is what we're doing now, you gotta do something different. Not better, but different. Flash was proprietary tech. Eventually Adobe would have worked this out and owned the internet. You can't have proprietary tech underpinning everything. The story of video codecs bears this out. I developed a ton of desktop UI in Visual Basic. It was easy. But I didn't have to allow for random screen sizes, random browsers, random OS's, random accessibility problems, rarely had to allow for random languages (and that was difficult), and I had a synchronous back end that I could wait for between clicks. Sorry, but the difference between desktop and web UI is huge, and underestimating that gap is a major cause of bad web UI.

pjmlp 7y ago
Pretty easy with VB.NET and WPF/UWP. The desktop world has long moved from fixed layouts from VB 6 and lower. Since 2001 actually, given that even Forms has a layout manager.
stcredzero 7y ago
petulant (and I'm still not sure that's the right word for it) because instead of learning the technology that everyone else (i.e. the standards bodies that decide these things) decides is what we're doing now, you gotta do something different. Not better, but different. You don't get better, if you don't try different. In terms of clarity and expressive power, I would say that Smalltalk is a step above Javascript.