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Can confirm. I was doing flash game development when flash "died." One of the guys I worked with created the Flex compiler. He told me Adobe had a seriously bad

Can confirm. I was doing flash game development when flash "died." One of the guys I worked with created the Flex compiler. He told me Adobe had a seriously bad combination of brain drain and code ossification. The motto on the flash team was "don't break the internet." For years, they were terrified of making any changes, especially ones that might break backward compatibility. This lack of ability to change anything meant their brightest never stuck around very long. This only made those who were left even more terrified to make any changes because the institutional knowledge was gone. It's a vicious cycle. By the time they realized they had to make serious changes and started work on stage3d, they didn't have the expertise necessary to pull it off.

Matthias247 7y ago
> For years, they were terrified of making any changes, especially ones that might break backward compatibility. This lack of ability to change anything meant their brightest never stuck around very long. This only made those who were left even more terrified to make any changes because the institutional knowledge was gone. It's a vicious cycle. That's an interesting comment. I actually wonder whether this eventually happens for any successful product. At the end this gives competitors a chance to surpass the product. So it's definitely a cycle.
- ScottFree 7y ago
  It happens to a lot of successful products over time, but it's not inevitable by any means. It's possible to make software that is viable long term. But, there are many ugly realities regarding the current state of Corporate America that encourages this cycle. For example, the fact that most engineers need to job hop in order to get promotions and raises. That makes it nearly impossible to build up long term institutional knowledge at any one company. Another example: everyone in a publicly held company, from the rank and file programmers to the CEO, are rewarded for short term sales at the expense of long term stability. We had a thread here not too long ago[0] about how being a "maintenance engineer" was career suicide. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224188

Matthias247 7y ago

> For years, they were terrified of making any changes, especially ones that might break backward compatibility. This lack of ability to change anything meant their brightest never stuck around very long. This only made those who were left even more terrified to make any changes because the institutional knowledge was gone. It's a vicious cycle. That's an interesting comment. I actually wonder whether this eventually happens for any successful product. At the end this gives competitors a chance to surpass the product. So it's definitely a cycle.

ScottFree 7y ago
It happens to a lot of successful products over time, but it's not inevitable by any means. It's possible to make software that is viable long term. But, there are many ugly realities regarding the current state of Corporate America that encourages this cycle. For example, the fact that most engineers need to job hop in order to get promotions and raises. That makes it nearly impossible to build up long term institutional knowledge at any one company. Another example: everyone in a publicly held company, from the rank and file programmers to the CEO, are rewarded for short term sales at the expense of long term stability. We had a thread here not too long ago[0] about how being a "maintenance engineer" was career suicide. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224188