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Got a question for any front end devs who were experts in Flash and AS but now experts in React. Qualitatively speaking what was the development experience lik

Got a question for any front end devs who were experts in Flash and AS but now experts in React. Qualitatively speaking what was the development experience like for Flash websites or animations vs. HTML 5 + react OR JS? Can you say definitively one experience was better than the other or is it a more complicated story? I know there's a lot of hate for flash but I'm specifically asking about the developer experience here.

JiNCMG 6y ago
WAIT. Are you asking "real" devs or designers how could figure out some scripts using Actionscript. Huge difference. I know a few Actionscript Masters that could barely handle JS.
tomgp 6y ago
It's a mixed bag. The ideal usecase for Flash vs React is very different. 10 years ago with AS3 I could put together a graphically rich game with decent sound or an intercative graphic very quickly, it would be performant and available as a small download -- much easier than doing similar today though libraries like phaser have certainly helped the situation a great deal. It just wouldn't make sense to try to make a sprite based platform game in React. On the other hand, complex forms, modular UIs and dynamically loading content -- areas where React (etc) excel were possible in Flash (espescially with adobe's Flex UI framework) but never looked any good or behaved in a satisfying way (my feeling is that pursuing this kind of thing as a kind of 'look at us we can do serious software' move caused adobe to take their eye off the ball wrt where they could provide real advantages over web-standards based solutions). Further, colaborating across teams of any size on AS3 based products was hard -- you'd have to pretty much roll your own CI/ deployment stuff (which I guess was the case with JS at the time too). In summary: Horses for courses. As a language I really enjoyed AS3; solid class system, strongly typed, good refactoring tools and crucially a decent and standard library.
- HeckFeck 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing. I may be old or disconnected, but it seems like the like of the flash animator community won't be seen again. Where will we find another Homestar Runner or Weebl? It was the right tool at just the right time. It was well able to deliver animations and interactive multimedia with the one tool and ecosystem. While the JS/HTML5 tools can manage animations and multimedia, it seems like the environment, libraries and tools are much more spread out... which perhaps discourages animators, while developers are used to working in such a way.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    No matter the disadvantages of a medium or technology, there will be somebody making something amazing with it. Homestar is a work of creative genius. It's good in a way to be rid of Flash, but something is always lost.
  - crimsonalucard5 6y ago
    I was a kid and not a developer yet when I started playing flash games. There was a lot of amazing stuff out there. Nowadays the dev tools for browsers just aren't geared in that direction. React + HTML + JS is geared for a very specific type of UI while flash is more general. Good to hear that it wasn't actually that bad. The fact that it was typed actually makes the developer experience quite good.

JiNCMG 6y ago

WAIT. Are you asking "real" devs or designers how could figure out some scripts using Actionscript. Huge difference. I know a few Actionscript Masters that could barely handle JS.

tomgp 6y ago

It's a mixed bag. The ideal usecase for Flash vs React is very different. 10 years ago with AS3 I could put together a graphically rich game with decent sound or an intercative graphic very quickly, it would be performant and available as a small download -- much easier than doing similar today though libraries like phaser have certainly helped the situation a great deal. It just wouldn't make sense to try to make a sprite based platform game in React. On the other hand, complex forms, modular UIs and dynamically loading content -- areas where React (etc) excel were possible in Flash (espescially with adobe's Flex UI framework) but never looked any good or behaved in a satisfying way (my feeling is that pursuing this kind of thing as a kind of 'look at us we can do serious software' move caused adobe to take their eye off the ball wrt where they could provide real advantages over web-standards based solutions). Further, colaborating across teams of any size on AS3 based products was hard -- you'd have to pretty much roll your own CI/ deployment stuff (which I guess was the case with JS at the time too). In summary: Horses for courses. As a language I really enjoyed AS3; solid class system, strongly typed, good refactoring tools and crucially a decent and standard library.

HeckFeck 6y ago
Thanks for sharing. I may be old or disconnected, but it seems like the like of the flash animator community won't be seen again. Where will we find another Homestar Runner or Weebl? It was the right tool at just the right time. It was well able to deliver animations and interactive multimedia with the one tool and ecosystem. While the JS/HTML5 tools can manage animations and multimedia, it seems like the environment, libraries and tools are much more spread out... which perhaps discourages animators, while developers are used to working in such a way.
- leephillips 6y ago
  No matter the disadvantages of a medium or technology, there will be somebody making something amazing with it. Homestar is a work of creative genius. It's good in a way to be rid of Flash, but something is always lost.
- crimsonalucard5 6y ago
  I was a kid and not a developer yet when I started playing flash games. There was a lot of amazing stuff out there. Nowadays the dev tools for browsers just aren't geared in that direction. React + HTML + JS is geared for a very specific type of UI while flash is more general. Good to hear that it wasn't actually that bad. The fact that it was typed actually makes the developer experience quite good.