<story><title>Flash Is Responsible for the Internet&apos;s Most Creative Era</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3awk7/flash-is-responsible-for-the-internets-most-creative-era</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dTal</author><text>Not just young people. As in other creative arts, if the tooling is over-complex or high-friction it can simply kill the creative flow. We should aim to make things pleasant to use for experts as well as beginners. There is a great deal of philosophical resistance to this idea hiding just under the surface, driven perhaps by a sense that difficult interfaces are a test of worthiness. Consider the barrier to entry to create a &amp;#x27;hello world&amp;#x27; mobile app - it seems awesomely, perversely difficult compared to the intrinsic simplicity of the task. I would argue that this is &lt;i&gt;deliberate gatekeeping&lt;/i&gt; - if ordinary people could create content, this would threaten an awful lot of business models, including and especially the business models of people who run app stores and take a cut of the profits. Can&amp;#x27;t have the techno-serfs &lt;i&gt;programming&lt;/i&gt;, can we?</text></item><item><author>hunta2097</author><text>Disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;m an old git.&lt;p&gt;I think you have deftly described a bigger problem, as the whole industry gets more and more sophisticated and complex. The barrier for entry is so high now that I think it stifles young people&amp;#x27;s interest too quickly.&lt;p&gt;The great thing about Flash was the developer tool. Part animation studio, part simple programming IDE. It was a great balance.&lt;p&gt;Maybe there is a place in the market for framework to implement a flash-a-like in a HTML5 Canvas?</text></item><item><author>l_t</author><text>I had a formative experience with Flash as a middle schooler. I loved Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, etc. I thought the videos were hilarious and the stick-figure-style animation was approachable. So I acquired Flash, and I was blown away by how easy it was to create these silly animations. Automatic tweening was a miracle to me.&lt;p&gt;Since then I&amp;#x27;ve done a lot of video editing with different tools, but I still think back to Macromedia Flash and how I, a child with no ability to code and no knowledge of HTML or Web tech, was able to make my imagination come to life on the screen.&lt;p&gt;I believe it&amp;#x27;s that powerful experience &lt;i&gt;for novices&lt;/i&gt; that we&amp;#x27;re missing. I&amp;#x27;m not sure how we should get it back.&lt;p&gt;(edit: phrasing)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>strken</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s gatekeeping. I think it&amp;#x27;s because experts need different tools to beginners, and have louder voices when a tool doesn&amp;#x27;t meet their needs.&lt;p&gt;Consider Ruby on Rails. It was the most beginner-friendly way to create a web app when it was popular, but the very things that made it that way - opinionated design, sacrificing speed&amp;#x2F;correctness&amp;#x2F;scale by using Ruby, &amp;quot;batteries included&amp;quot;, and a cultish fanbase that drew new users to it - made it the target of justified criticism from experts who wanted flexibility, type safety, speed, lightweight design, fewer CVEs, and fewer annoying fanboys. Flash came under fire for similar things: performance issues, poor UX when used in the wrong place, constant security vulnerabilities, being a proprietary standard.&lt;p&gt;These are actually good criticisms! There&amp;#x27;s no shadowy cabal who arranged feigned outrage over flash vulnerabilities, people were genuinely upset that a proprietary piece of software was turning their browser security into a sieve and stopping screenreaders from working. The criticisms just failed to ask why it was so popular with beginners anyway.</text></comment>
<story><title>Flash Is Responsible for the Internet&apos;s Most Creative Era</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3awk7/flash-is-responsible-for-the-internets-most-creative-era</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dTal</author><text>Not just young people. As in other creative arts, if the tooling is over-complex or high-friction it can simply kill the creative flow. We should aim to make things pleasant to use for experts as well as beginners. There is a great deal of philosophical resistance to this idea hiding just under the surface, driven perhaps by a sense that difficult interfaces are a test of worthiness. Consider the barrier to entry to create a &amp;#x27;hello world&amp;#x27; mobile app - it seems awesomely, perversely difficult compared to the intrinsic simplicity of the task. I would argue that this is &lt;i&gt;deliberate gatekeeping&lt;/i&gt; - if ordinary people could create content, this would threaten an awful lot of business models, including and especially the business models of people who run app stores and take a cut of the profits. Can&amp;#x27;t have the techno-serfs &lt;i&gt;programming&lt;/i&gt;, can we?</text></item><item><author>hunta2097</author><text>Disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;m an old git.&lt;p&gt;I think you have deftly described a bigger problem, as the whole industry gets more and more sophisticated and complex. The barrier for entry is so high now that I think it stifles young people&amp;#x27;s interest too quickly.&lt;p&gt;The great thing about Flash was the developer tool. Part animation studio, part simple programming IDE. It was a great balance.&lt;p&gt;Maybe there is a place in the market for framework to implement a flash-a-like in a HTML5 Canvas?</text></item><item><author>l_t</author><text>I had a formative experience with Flash as a middle schooler. I loved Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, etc. I thought the videos were hilarious and the stick-figure-style animation was approachable. So I acquired Flash, and I was blown away by how easy it was to create these silly animations. Automatic tweening was a miracle to me.&lt;p&gt;Since then I&amp;#x27;ve done a lot of video editing with different tools, but I still think back to Macromedia Flash and how I, a child with no ability to code and no knowledge of HTML or Web tech, was able to make my imagination come to life on the screen.&lt;p&gt;I believe it&amp;#x27;s that powerful experience &lt;i&gt;for novices&lt;/i&gt; that we&amp;#x27;re missing. I&amp;#x27;m not sure how we should get it back.&lt;p&gt;(edit: phrasing)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>heavyset_go</author><text>Of all of the areas where there is legitimate gatekeeping, like with the AMA and residency limits, software is one of the worst examples you could have picked.&lt;p&gt;Software is one of those spaces where there is an &lt;i&gt;incredible&lt;/i&gt; amount of capital invested in making things easy for the lowest common denominator.&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;i&gt;so many&lt;/i&gt; resources for people of any age and background to learn practical skills in this field. There are summer camps where 7 year old kids learn to program.</text></comment>