6 ms·

Flash is dead. If you can't deal with this sort of change...there's the door

75 points by kayluhb 15y ago

delete 15y ago
Then why does google keep putting flash cookies ("SharedObjects") on my disk?
- kayluhb 15y ago
  Did you read the article? It's not really about Flash, but the need for people to adapt to an ever changing programming landscape. Obviously, Flash isn't actually dead.
bsiemon 15y ago
Seems odd that universities would have a class on flash at all.
- kayluhb 15y ago
  What is odd about that?
  - bsiemon 15y ago
    It seems too specific a technology to learn in school. Time in that class might be better spent in a more fundamental area.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      In most programs the point wouldn't be to teach the specific technology, but to teach something like "interactive media design/programming", or variations on that. To keep things manageable, though, often courses will pick one environment for the examples/project to be in. Flash is a common choice; HTML5 and Processing are also used semi-regularly. Courses catering more for CS majors might use something lower-level like raw DirectX or OpenGL (possibly via a wrapper like Glut or SDL). You typically can't avoid choosing some technology, whether it's Flash or OpenGL, even if the point of the course isn't specifically to teach that technology's API and quirks.
- xiaoma 15y ago
  It's all over the art departments I've seen. Flash is ubiquitous in animation-focused tracks. While lower-level tools are necessary for studio-quality productions, I still don't know anything that even comes close to flash for prototypes and low to mid-level animation work. What does your university use?
  - jinushaun 15y ago
    If Flash dies, what will people use to prototype? It's used in UX testing everywhere I've looked. It's invaluable for quickly creating animated interactive prototypes. Flash is not just obnoxious websites and banner ads.
- andrewfelix 15y ago
  IMO Flash is a great tool to develop a familiarity with certain useful concepts including frame based animation, tweening, basic programming and even OOP.
JayeshSidhwani 15y ago
What do you think would be its implications on Flash Support for Desktop Browsers? Will Adobe discontinue its support when some other biggie comes and claims that HTML5 is the way to go for desktop browsers as well?!
- kayluhb 15y ago
  Not in the near future. There are no plans to discontinue Desktop dev. More has been written about that by Mike Chambers here. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3226087 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3226087
poppysan 15y ago
While I do agree that you need to be flexible with your knowledge of tools, I do have an issue. People act as if flash is being abandoned. Its not. Mobile Flash is. Several new smart-phones and tablets nowadays use browsers with REAL FLASH on it, so there is no need to continue development on mobile flash. That's all that happened. No big win for anyone. Adobe has been focusing on html5, as have the rest of the web, and imho, Adobe has some great tools to author content in html5 already.
- kayluhb 15y ago
  Agreed. If you look at my other submissions, there's some good stuff re: this point.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewfelix 15y ago
  But don't you get the feeling this is the beginning of the end? Obviously Adobe aren't going to abandon desktop or 'real' Flash without a viable alternative Adobe offer. After all plenty of industries are still highly dependent on Flash. Especially mine (online advertising). But my feeling is Adobe are developing a Flash author that outputs js/canvas seamlessly alongside a swf. Once we're all comfortable with that idea, then they abandon 'real' Flash.
- gte910h 15y ago
  Mobile flash and flex.
Maven911 15y ago
Grrrrr i personally hate this darwinistic way of dealing with people 'if you cant door deal with it, then get out'... this is not like trying to get into the NFL, he should have taken a nicer approach, in fact as a teachet he should have been able to predict this well in advance and shown his students how to transition to other technologies
- tommi 15y ago
  Flash isn't dead like kayluhb pointed out Mike Chambers post: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-player-for-mobile-browsers-the-flash-platform-and-the-future-of-flash/ http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-o... True, "if you can't deal with it..." approach is rude. But it's the truth. And Tom did explain the situation in detail to the students as he wrote in his post. It wasn't like STFU or leave.
- pnathan 15y ago
  No, it's like trying to get into a job, where if you don't have a given set of technology acronyms, your resume is shown the round file.
droithomme 15y ago
Hopefully Tom will let me know when the H264 version of YouTube has the same features, speed and usability as the one that uses a flash player.
- timdorr 15y ago
  First, you're confusing technologies. H.264 is a video codec that YouTube uses for all its video. The HTML5 and Flash players and any custom players (Android or iOS's app, for example) use it. The HTML5 player is just as usable, if not more so, as the Flash player. Go give it a try again: http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 You might not even notice the difference.
  - mappu 15y ago
    To add to the pedantry: H.264 is a video format, a bitstream specification, not a codec. A codec is a compressor/decompressor for said format, so in this case that's x264/ffmpeg.
overgard 15y ago
The thing that strikes me about all this "flash is dead" talk is that HTML 5 really isn't a sufficient replacement for Flash. It's not even close. I suspect people who say this haven't used either technology seriously, because I can do things in flash that are an order of a magnitude more performant -- and flash isn't even that good. (For the record, I greatly dislike most of flash. It's pretty much shocking that they've just now gotten around to supporting hardware graphics acceleration in a half decent manner.) HTML 5 is a nice small step; but that's all it is, a SMALL step. If you want to kill flash (which you should), we need something better than this.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  Flash performance varies significantly by platform. It is miserable on all mobile devices and banned on the tablet market leader's devices. Given the fact that mobile is gropwing so fast and is pretty clearly a huge part of computing in the future, it's ridiculous to suggest Flash seriously out performs HTML5 in this most important area.
- rimantas 15y ago
  Millions of people enjoy their iOS devices without a trace of Flash. For them Flash _is_ already dead. I am not sure what you can do in Flash that is order of magnitude more performant, but I am pretty sure, that even if that's true I don't care—because this is most likely some very perfomant stuff I have no interest in.
geraldalewis 15y ago
This is an embarrassing low point for Hacker News. Trolling, exaggerated headline on the front page. It takes almost no effort to make a reasonable counterargument, so I sense that's not the point of the submission.

75 points by kayluhb 15y ago

delete 15y ago

Then why does google keep putting flash cookies ("SharedObjects") on my disk?

kayluhb 15y ago
Did you read the article? It's not really about Flash, but the need for people to adapt to an ever changing programming landscape. Obviously, Flash isn't actually dead.

bsiemon 15y ago

Seems odd that universities would have a class on flash at all.

kayluhb 15y ago
What is odd about that?
- bsiemon 15y ago
  It seems too specific a technology to learn in school. Time in that class might be better spent in a more fundamental area.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    In most programs the point wouldn't be to teach the specific technology, but to teach something like "interactive media design/programming", or variations on that. To keep things manageable, though, often courses will pick one environment for the examples/project to be in. Flash is a common choice; HTML5 and Processing are also used semi-regularly. Courses catering more for CS majors might use something lower-level like raw DirectX or OpenGL (possibly via a wrapper like Glut or SDL). You typically can't avoid choosing some technology, whether it's Flash or OpenGL, even if the point of the course isn't specifically to teach that technology's API and quirks.
xiaoma 15y ago
It's all over the art departments I've seen. Flash is ubiquitous in animation-focused tracks. While lower-level tools are necessary for studio-quality productions, I still don't know anything that even comes close to flash for prototypes and low to mid-level animation work. What does your university use?
- jinushaun 15y ago
  If Flash dies, what will people use to prototype? It's used in UX testing everywhere I've looked. It's invaluable for quickly creating animated interactive prototypes. Flash is not just obnoxious websites and banner ads.
andrewfelix 15y ago
IMO Flash is a great tool to develop a familiarity with certain useful concepts including frame based animation, tweening, basic programming and even OOP.

JayeshSidhwani 15y ago

What do you think would be its implications on Flash Support for Desktop Browsers? Will Adobe discontinue its support when some other biggie comes and claims that HTML5 is the way to go for desktop browsers as well?!

kayluhb 15y ago
Not in the near future. There are no plans to discontinue Desktop dev. More has been written about that by Mike Chambers here. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3226087 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3226087

poppysan 15y ago

While I do agree that you need to be flexible with your knowledge of tools, I do have an issue. People act as if flash is being abandoned. Its not. Mobile Flash is. Several new smart-phones and tablets nowadays use browsers with REAL FLASH on it, so there is no need to continue development on mobile flash. That's all that happened. No big win for anyone. Adobe has been focusing on html5, as have the rest of the web, and imho, Adobe has some great tools to author content in html5 already.

kayluhb 15y ago
Agreed. If you look at my other submissions, there's some good stuff re: this point.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
andrewfelix 15y ago
But don't you get the feeling this is the beginning of the end? Obviously Adobe aren't going to abandon desktop or 'real' Flash without a viable alternative Adobe offer. After all plenty of industries are still highly dependent on Flash. Especially mine (online advertising). But my feeling is Adobe are developing a Flash author that outputs js/canvas seamlessly alongside a swf. Once we're all comfortable with that idea, then they abandon 'real' Flash.
gte910h 15y ago
Mobile flash and flex.

Maven911 15y ago

Grrrrr i personally hate this darwinistic way of dealing with people 'if you cant door deal with it, then get out'... this is not like trying to get into the NFL, he should have taken a nicer approach, in fact as a teachet he should have been able to predict this well in advance and shown his students how to transition to other technologies

tommi 15y ago
Flash isn't dead like kayluhb pointed out Mike Chambers post: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-player-for-mobile-browsers-the-flash-platform-and-the-future-of-flash/ http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-o... True, "if you can't deal with it..." approach is rude. But it's the truth. And Tom did explain the situation in detail to the students as he wrote in his post. It wasn't like STFU or leave.
pnathan 15y ago
No, it's like trying to get into a job, where if you don't have a given set of technology acronyms, your resume is shown the round file.

droithomme 15y ago

Hopefully Tom will let me know when the H264 version of YouTube has the same features, speed and usability as the one that uses a flash player.

timdorr 15y ago
First, you're confusing technologies. H.264 is a video codec that YouTube uses for all its video. The HTML5 and Flash players and any custom players (Android or iOS's app, for example) use it. The HTML5 player is just as usable, if not more so, as the Flash player. Go give it a try again: http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 You might not even notice the difference.
- mappu 15y ago
  To add to the pedantry: H.264 is a video format, a bitstream specification, not a codec. A codec is a compressor/decompressor for said format, so in this case that's x264/ffmpeg.

overgard 15y ago

The thing that strikes me about all this "flash is dead" talk is that HTML 5 really isn't a sufficient replacement for Flash. It's not even close. I suspect people who say this haven't used either technology seriously, because I can do things in flash that are an order of a magnitude more performant -- and flash isn't even that good. (For the record, I greatly dislike most of flash. It's pretty much shocking that they've just now gotten around to supporting hardware graphics acceleration in a half decent manner.) HTML 5 is a nice small step; but that's all it is, a SMALL step. If you want to kill flash (which you should), we need something better than this.

cryptoz 15y ago
Flash performance varies significantly by platform. It is miserable on all mobile devices and banned on the tablet market leader's devices. Given the fact that mobile is gropwing so fast and is pretty clearly a huge part of computing in the future, it's ridiculous to suggest Flash seriously out performs HTML5 in this most important area.
rimantas 15y ago
Millions of people enjoy their iOS devices without a trace of Flash. For them Flash _is_ already dead. I am not sure what you can do in Flash that is order of magnitude more performant, but I am pretty sure, that even if that's true I don't care—because this is most likely some very perfomant stuff I have no interest in.

geraldalewis 15y ago

This is an embarrassing low point for Hacker News. Trolling, exaggerated headline on the front page. It takes almost no effort to make a reasonable counterargument, so I sense that's not the point of the submission.