I can't speak for everyone here, but I would imagine the majority of people creating Flash content back in the day were using some warez version. For me persona

I can't speak for everyone here, but I would imagine the majority of people creating Flash content back in the day were using some warez version. For me personally, I was a teenager and my parents had no idea what I was doing on the PC. I believe I started with Macromedia Flash 2 or 3. I just wanted to animate something on the screen for the same reason most of us started programming - that feeling of being able to instruct the computer to do something and see it come to life. I used Flash for a while and even got a small job in college creating a new Flash website. Even with all of those memories I have zero interest in Adobe Animate because animating things is not my career and I don't want yet another monthly subscription. I like that Construct Animate has a free plan, although the free tier seems too limited to be useful.