In 1994, Hasselhoff was scheduled to perform a concert on pay-per-view from Atlantic City. The concert was expected to help reignite his singing career in the United States. However, on the night of the concert, O.J. Simpson was involved in a police chase in southern California. Viewership of the concert was significantly lower than expected due to the live coverage of the chase. (wikipedia)
In 2011 Carl Schooff launched his first ActionScript tutorial on activetuts+. On that same day, Adobe announced it would no longer support development of Flash Player on mobile devices. Due to all the clutter on twitter, no one saw his tweet.
Neither man gave up, and proceeded to have fulfilling success in their careers.
So guys, the Death of Flash has been pronounced yet once again
This post is not about me, or trying to drive traffic to some tutorial. In fact I’m not even linking to it.
The point is that I know what it’s like to sink your every waking moment into pursuing the technology and creative expression that you love only to be repeatedly knocked over the head for choosing it. All of us have invested countless hours into honing our craft and dreaming of all the wondrous things we will be able to achieve.
I could go on and on about HTML vs Flash and all that stuff you have read before. You know the score. Through all the battles we have faced together we have always had plenty of reasons to stand strong.
This time things are different
This is the first time that it appears that Adobe has given up and and abandoned us as developers.
We’ve survived “Jobs’ Open Letter” and thousands of “flash sucks” media trolls. This is the first time that Adobe has shown signs of caving, and I know it is very disheartening to a lot of us.
I could write a long article on my impression of how Adobe failed to take advantage of the huge push Android hardware manufacturers made to advertise their devices as “Flash Enabled” or rant about how dare they do this to us. I don’t think any of that does any good.
Right now there is so much going on about “How bad Adobe is handling this” and “Oh no, I’m doomed, I hate them”. I’m not here to defend or condemn them. It’s far to early to really make any sense of all this and its very easy to make bad decisions in the heat of the moment.
What’s important right now
Real people have lost their jobs.
If you vaguely know of any of the Adobe folks that got axed do all you can to support them. A quick thank you email, tweet, pat on the back is in order. You worrying about where you will be in the next 6 months is nothing compared to what these people are dealing with today.
Don’t let the media decide your fate
You know this is going to get blown way out of proportion. Regardless of political affiliation, if you let what you read in the news dictate your attitude for the day, you’re doomed. Yes it is smart to be informed, but only you can control how you react to things. Don’t let a little bad news overpower you. The difference between reality and what a techblog reports are wildly different things. I bet a bunch of you have been buried in Flash work for the past 2 years. Reading the papers we should have all been made homeless by now.
Remain positive and use this to your advantage
Keep your heads up. It’s impossible to know what is truth and what is corporate spin coming out of Adobe right now. All you can do is keep doing what you can do the best you can do it. There is no way that your 2-10 years worth of Flash experience is all of a sudden going to become useless. You have a huge advantage making a shift or refining your direction right now. If you see your obstacles as opportunities you will not be defeated. Ever.
Moving Forward
I love Flash to death. I’m committed to making the best Flash experiences I can and helping people do the same. I’m certainly not going to give up today. If I have to eventually dabble a bit with Edge or javascript… so what?
You know how much fun you have with Flash and the amazing potential that lies ahead. Dig in. Support the community. Give Adobe some time to make things clear. Create work that continues to outshine what can be done with “web standards”. Adobe has done a fine job of giving us the tools we need. Its up to us to make amazing things that prove there is a reason for them to exist.
Rolling with the punches,
Carl
