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Adobe is slaughtering the goose because it knows the golden eggs will be worthless in a few short years. I'm only surprised that they are doing it so blatantly.

Adobe is slaughtering the goose because it knows the golden eggs will be worthless in a few short years. I'm only surprised that they are doing it so blatantly. And good riddance. The Flash runtime is probably the worst target I've ever developed against, made worse by the smug and arrogant blogging of the core developers (which pops up in the search results when googling bugs they caused, which in that context is infuriating). Haxe runs loops round their AS3 compiler, in speed, stability, bug count, and code optimization, and there's pretty much no feature of the Flash runtime that doesn't contain well known and crippling bugs reported years prior. It's the quality of one of those crappy little proprietary tools you get from vendors, except it's the biggest platform in the world. The day HTML5 overtakes Flash, I'm going to pop a cork.

html5iscancer 15y ago
I feel you on the hate for Flash, but HTML5 is only marginally less stupid. Javascript as the bottom layer of a platform? Give me a break. And a bloated pile of standards is worse than a simple proprietary tool (which unfortunately, Flash is not).
Skrekkpus 15y ago
You think html5 is going to compete with flash/unity on 3d gaming??? Haha, you're cute!
nixle 15y ago
I too hate the hundreds of well known bugs that I constantly run into. I hate it! Oh wait, no that just trolling BS. <3 Flash <3. And I can't blame Adobe: Everybody is making billions on gaming, Apple takes away 30% of all of it. That's crazy! Adobe now has the most awesome tools, probably invested a lot. I can't blame them for wanting a piece of the action. And the best part: If you don't use BOTH Alchemy and Stage3D you don't have to pay a dime. <3
- fruchtose 15y ago
  >I too hate the hundreds of well known bugs that I constantly run into. I hate it! Oh wait, no that just trolling BS. Flash is famous for bugs, security holes, instability. You must be living under a rock if you are unaware of these issues. Oh, and next time you call the parent a liar, you might want to make sure his job is not a Flash game developer, as Michael Reitzenstein clearly has more than a few hours of Flash under his belt.
  - reitzensteinm 15y ago
    Yeah, I've made my living pretty much exclusively on Flash since 2008. Life got significantly easier once I moved away from Adobe's tools to Haxe, and started using as little of their APIs as possible. I regret my ranty tone of my original post, but I stand by my criticisms of the platform. Flash had solidly won the chicken and egg race for web plugins 10 years ago. Success since then has not been based on technical merit, they've just been coasting. Only when WebGL was already implemented in a sizeable proportion of browsers did they even bother to put 3D in the platform! Name me another instance where a company has been out innovated by a standards board and maybe I'll retract my point.
    - Skrekkpus 15y ago
      I completely agree they have been lazy, and gpu accelerated 3d should have been there ages ago. In the meantime Unity has popped up as a great alternative for indie devs who want to make 3d games.
  - nixle 15y ago
    Sorry to break up your little circle-jerk here, but if you really need to bring security holes into the discussion you have lost already. You understand the the type of security holes that are found in the Flash player to not concern the average gamedev, right? And all the AS3 core functionality runs pretty solid, please show me these mayor bugs you talk about. I've also been a game dev for many years and started out at Flash before finding my place with one of the bigger studios. I still use Flash regularly to bounce ideas around and I still love it. If you really run into that many issues with Flash these are probably performance related and you should probably move on to a higher level language because you have outgrown the AS3 api.
melling 15y ago
From a business point of view, where's the money? Mobile is really hot so people will be writing native apps for iOS and Android. For most web sites, targeting mobile will be big so HTML5 is necessary, regardless of its limitations. How much money is there in Flash games on the web? Can someone quantify the current market size in dollars?

html5iscancer 15y ago

I feel you on the hate for Flash, but HTML5 is only marginally less stupid. Javascript as the bottom layer of a platform? Give me a break. And a bloated pile of standards is worse than a simple proprietary tool (which unfortunately, Flash is not).

Skrekkpus 15y ago

You think html5 is going to compete with flash/unity on 3d gaming??? Haha, you're cute!

nixle 15y ago

I too hate the hundreds of well known bugs that I constantly run into. I hate it! Oh wait, no that just trolling BS. <3 Flash <3. And I can't blame Adobe: Everybody is making billions on gaming, Apple takes away 30% of all of it. That's crazy! Adobe now has the most awesome tools, probably invested a lot. I can't blame them for wanting a piece of the action. And the best part: If you don't use BOTH Alchemy and Stage3D you don't have to pay a dime. <3

fruchtose 15y ago
>I too hate the hundreds of well known bugs that I constantly run into. I hate it! Oh wait, no that just trolling BS. Flash is famous for bugs, security holes, instability. You must be living under a rock if you are unaware of these issues. Oh, and next time you call the parent a liar, you might want to make sure his job is not a Flash game developer, as Michael Reitzenstein clearly has more than a few hours of Flash under his belt.
- reitzensteinm 15y ago
  Yeah, I've made my living pretty much exclusively on Flash since 2008. Life got significantly easier once I moved away from Adobe's tools to Haxe, and started using as little of their APIs as possible. I regret my ranty tone of my original post, but I stand by my criticisms of the platform. Flash had solidly won the chicken and egg race for web plugins 10 years ago. Success since then has not been based on technical merit, they've just been coasting. Only when WebGL was already implemented in a sizeable proportion of browsers did they even bother to put 3D in the platform! Name me another instance where a company has been out innovated by a standards board and maybe I'll retract my point.
  - Skrekkpus 15y ago
    I completely agree they have been lazy, and gpu accelerated 3d should have been there ages ago. In the meantime Unity has popped up as a great alternative for indie devs who want to make 3d games.
- nixle 15y ago
  Sorry to break up your little circle-jerk here, but if you really need to bring security holes into the discussion you have lost already. You understand the the type of security holes that are found in the Flash player to not concern the average gamedev, right? And all the AS3 core functionality runs pretty solid, please show me these mayor bugs you talk about. I've also been a game dev for many years and started out at Flash before finding my place with one of the bigger studios. I still use Flash regularly to bounce ideas around and I still love it. If you really run into that many issues with Flash these are probably performance related and you should probably move on to a higher level language because you have outgrown the AS3 api.

melling 15y ago

From a business point of view, where's the money? Mobile is really hot so people will be writing native apps for iOS and Android. For most web sites, targeting mobile will be big so HTML5 is necessary, regardless of its limitations. How much money is there in Flash games on the web? Can someone quantify the current market size in dollars?