5 ms·

There are reasons each of those failed that have little to do with the core concept. And to be honest, I think Flash was killed before there was a suitable rep

There are reasons each of those failed that have little to do with the core concept. And to be honest, I think Flash was killed before there was a suitable replacement to fill the gap. It took more than 10 years since it "died" to actually get rid of it, because HTML5 isn't actually up to the task. I think the fact that it survived so long proves there's a use for these types of runtimes.

danShumway 6y ago
I've commented before on this subject, but Flash didn't survive because it took HTML5 10 years fill in the gap. Flash survived because: A) enterprises don't upgrade or move away from technologies period (we still support IE11 and old Windows Server deployments at my current company). B) Flash the authoring tool never got replaced. It's not about whether or not HTML5 is up to the task of being a Flash-equivalent runtime, nobody built a replacement for Macromedia/Adobe Flash targeting any runtime anywhere. To this day, there is not a vector animation tool on par with Flash for any platform, and that has nothing to do with the capabilities of the web. People blame HTML5 when what really happened was Adobe abandoned their authoring tools and nobody built an alternative because we expected the W3C or somebody to do it for us. But a programming language will never be a replacement for a full-featured content creation tool and IDE. Even WASM is not going to replace Flash unless some company or group somewhere actually sits down and writes a native program that can target it and that is actually competitive with what Flash the authoring tool offered devs. I have not seen serious effort in that direction, so if you're hoping WASM just magically makes these problems go away, I'm a little less optimistic about that. WASM is just going to be another runtime target -- a good one, but not a replacement for an IDE.
- anderspitman 6y ago
  Yes, my point would more accurately be made by replacing "HTML5" with "HTML5 platform/ecosystem". Your point about Wasm not automatically guaranteeing this is important. But it would be much easier to build such a tool for a simple greenfield runtime than for a modern browser.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    I have reasonably high hopes for WASM as a runtime, so I'm trying to thread a line between agreeing with you and disagreeing with you. I do think that compiling C code to WASM is easier than compiling C code to Javascript, and I do think that WASM is going to open some doors to sandboxed native applications that the web just can't handle. But at the same time, even forgetting about the cross-platform part, I have not seen an application framework for any platform -- even closed-down, highly consistent platforms like game consoles -- that offers the same feature-set as Flash. So WASM may make this easier, but we have platforms already today that are extremely easy to target. If you're targeting PS4/XBox, you know exactly what drivers, software, and graphics stacks are going to be installed. And a Flash replacement doesn't exist for any of those devices. So I urge some caution about assuming that the tools you want are going to be quickly built for WASM. In some ways, this is exactly the mistake that HTML5 advocates made with Flash. They assumed that all they needed to do was have APIs, and Adobe would do something to save Flash. But Adobe never really seemed to care. They had some half-hearted efforts to target devices like Android, but the Air runtime was never really good at that, and it didn't take over as a cross-platform desktop target the same way that modern Electron has. It seems intuitively obvious that if a cross-platform runtime existed that everyone loved, somebody would make a good graphics stack for it that was easy to use and that didn't require programming, but I'm not 100% certain that's actually true.
    - anderspitman 6y ago
      I think we're disagreeing less than you think, mostly just focusing on different things. I'll defer to you on Flash. I've never programmed in it directly. My observations are purely from the outside. I was just using it as an example for why I see potential in app runtimes.

danShumway 6y ago

I've commented before on this subject, but Flash didn't survive because it took HTML5 10 years fill in the gap. Flash survived because: A) enterprises don't upgrade or move away from technologies period (we still support IE11 and old Windows Server deployments at my current company). B) Flash the authoring tool never got replaced. It's not about whether or not HTML5 is up to the task of being a Flash-equivalent runtime, nobody built a replacement for Macromedia/Adobe Flash targeting any runtime anywhere. To this day, there is not a vector animation tool on par with Flash for any platform, and that has nothing to do with the capabilities of the web. People blame HTML5 when what really happened was Adobe abandoned their authoring tools and nobody built an alternative because we expected the W3C or somebody to do it for us. But a programming language will never be a replacement for a full-featured content creation tool and IDE. Even WASM is not going to replace Flash unless some company or group somewhere actually sits down and writes a native program that can target it and that is actually competitive with what Flash the authoring tool offered devs. I have not seen serious effort in that direction, so if you're hoping WASM just magically makes these problems go away, I'm a little less optimistic about that. WASM is just going to be another runtime target -- a good one, but not a replacement for an IDE.

anderspitman 6y ago
Yes, my point would more accurately be made by replacing "HTML5" with "HTML5 platform/ecosystem". Your point about Wasm not automatically guaranteeing this is important. But it would be much easier to build such a tool for a simple greenfield runtime than for a modern browser.
- danShumway 6y ago
  I have reasonably high hopes for WASM as a runtime, so I'm trying to thread a line between agreeing with you and disagreeing with you. I do think that compiling C code to WASM is easier than compiling C code to Javascript, and I do think that WASM is going to open some doors to sandboxed native applications that the web just can't handle. But at the same time, even forgetting about the cross-platform part, I have not seen an application framework for any platform -- even closed-down, highly consistent platforms like game consoles -- that offers the same feature-set as Flash. So WASM may make this easier, but we have platforms already today that are extremely easy to target. If you're targeting PS4/XBox, you know exactly what drivers, software, and graphics stacks are going to be installed. And a Flash replacement doesn't exist for any of those devices. So I urge some caution about assuming that the tools you want are going to be quickly built for WASM. In some ways, this is exactly the mistake that HTML5 advocates made with Flash. They assumed that all they needed to do was have APIs, and Adobe would do something to save Flash. But Adobe never really seemed to care. They had some half-hearted efforts to target devices like Android, but the Air runtime was never really good at that, and it didn't take over as a cross-platform desktop target the same way that modern Electron has. It seems intuitively obvious that if a cross-platform runtime existed that everyone loved, somebody would make a good graphics stack for it that was easy to use and that didn't require programming, but I'm not 100% certain that's actually true.
  - anderspitman 6y ago
    I think we're disagreeing less than you think, mostly just focusing on different things. I'll defer to you on Flash. I've never programmed in it directly. My observations are purely from the outside. I was just using it as an example for why I see potential in app runtimes.