Flash/Flex: Keep Calm and Carry On

source: Wikipedia

Keep calm and carry on. That was NOT my reaction when I read Adobe news about Flash Player for mobile. And then came another bad news about Flex SDK on the following day.

It was difficult for me. I was sad and a bit broken hearted. It’s even harder if you are surrounded by Flash-haters. It take times for me to recover. But this makes me realize that how much I (and probably other programmers) really love Flash platform.

I started playing with Flash since it was Flash 5. Then came Flash MX 2004 with ActionScript 2.0, and then AS3.0 which I like most. I’ve tried many things like JavaScript & even VBScript, not to mention other languages such as Pascal, C/C++, C#. After a quite long journey, I find Flash/Flex + AS3.0 fits me for making games.

Technology keeps on changing and getting better. Unfortunately, HTML5 isn’t ready and mature yet for game development. There are many things HTML5 has to catch up with. Don’t get me wrong, I think HTML5 has potential. In fact, I recommend you to start learning things like WebGL or trying Javascript-based frameworks.

But despite what people say, I think Flash will NOT die in the next 2-3 years. In fact, if you’re a game developer, this is the best time to use Flash. Finally Adobe starts focusing more in game development. There will be many exciting features ahead. Stage3D is still new and we haven’t seen the best things out of it yet. Molehill2, Starling/ND2D, concurrency, Flash Player 12, fantastics Flash-based 3D or game engines, and many more!

It’s also too early to say that this is the end of Flex. Spoon foundation haven’t start something big yet but I’d like to be optimist. By giving Flex framework governance to the open source foundation, Flex future and roadmap can be deciced independently from Adobe’s business or political agenda 😉 Isn’t that great?

So don’t panic, don’t rush. We stil have enough time, either to switch to HTML/JS/CSS, finish your Flash-based game engine, or do other stuff. No one knows what the future will be. Take your time for getting angry or sad, but after that, clear your head and keep your chin up. It might take 2 years (or even more) until HTML5 is good enough and able to catch up everything that Flash can do TODAY. Meanwhile, Flash is still here and keeps evolving.

So carry on, let’s code better Flash games or Flex RIA 😉

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