Flash is dying, and I loved Flash. So this is going to read like a eulogy, because that is what it is.
I loved that you were handed a whole canvas and could do anything on it. I loved the object-oriented code, the linking of components, the way that for a few hours the designer and the programmer were the same person. Most of all I loved that it moved.
Let me reminisce. My final project at DevStudios, back in 2005, was built in Flash. There was a coding class next to ours — six months to our five — and for the final they threw us together, nine of them and six of us, and handed us a real client. Ours was an automotive customization shop. You could put spoilers on a car, ground effects, flared bodies, hoods, door panels, and as you clicked, the parts flew in and out in real time. We built the whole thing in twenty-four hours. No sleep. Just go.
I have been chasing that feeling ever since. A room of people, a hard deadline, and a thing that moves when you tell it to.
Now most of what I made in it is unreachable. Not deleted, just unviewable, which is somehow worse. I have had to ask myself an honest question: do I rebuild everything outside of Flash, or do I let it go extinct? I built so much in it that there was only ever one answer, and so I am letting it go.
This is the dirge, then. Flash taught a generation of designers to code, and a generation of coders to care how things look. It is going out badly, and I will still defend what it gave us.
Things do not have to survive in order to have mattered.